People who are in their early twenties are estimated to be two and half times more likely to be sexually inactive than members of Gen X were at the same age.
Since the nineteen-nineties, the proportion of American high-school students who are virgins has risen from forty-five per cent to sixty per cent. The chief driver of this so-called “sex drought” is not, as one might expect, the aging of the American population but the ever more abstemious habits of the young. Only thirty-nine per cent reported having intercourse once or more a week, a drop of twelve percentage points since 1996. In 2018, nearly a quarter of Americans-the highest number ever recorded-reported having no sex at all in the previous twelve months. Not so obvious is why, for several years before the virus appeared on our shores, we had already been showing distinct signs of sluggishness in the attraction and affiliation departments.
Quite aside from the difficulty of meeting new partners and the chilling consequences of being cooped up with the same old ones, evolutionary psychologists speculate that we have a “behavioral immune system” that protects us in times of plague by making us less attracted to and less motivated to affiliate with others. It’s easy enough to see how the threat of a lethal virus might have had a generally anaphrodisiac effect. In November, a study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine found that the pandemic had caused a small but significant diminution in Americans’ sexual desire, pleasure, and frequency.
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.Īt the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, some people predicted that lockdowns and work-at-home rules would produce great surges in sexual activity, just as citywide blackouts have been said to do in the past.
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