The decline in sex between young people definitely doesn't really sound right, does it? We live in an age where a potential sex partner is a few swipes right on Tinder at any given time, and where "sex positivity" demonstrators throw around condoms like rice at a wedding.
"Despite their reputation for hooking up, millennials and the generation after them are actually having sex less often than their parents and grandparents did when they were young," said study author Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, to CBS. "That's partially because fewer [young people] have steady partners."
In other words, when bae asks you to come over for Netflix and Chill, they really do just want to watch an episode of House of Cards and then fall asleep.
Married people have also become less frisky, according to the data. "These data show a major reversal from previous decades in terms of marriage and sex," said Twenge. "In the 1990s, married people had sex more times per year than never-married people, but by the mid-2000s that reversed, with the never-married having more sex."
Fran Walfish, a couples therapist in Beverly Hills, blames the trend in part on social media. After all, why do the horizontal tango with the chiseled fellow or full-figured lady sharing your sheets, when you can browse dog pictures on Imgur or get in arguments about politics in a Sputnik comments section instead?
Another trend that may contribute is an overall feeling of malaise and impending dread that has overtaken American adults, for reasons Sputnik could not possibly hope to speculate upon. The BBC even argued that "the fear of climate change" may be a contributing factor. Fortunately, eco-friendly sex toys are as abundant as they are environmentally conscious.
One factor that is unlikely to contribute to this trend is pornography, which is often blamed for acting as a substitute for sex. The study found that those who watched porn regularly also tended to have sex regularly. Another factor discounted was people working too hard to, well, get hard: those with full-time jobs had more sex than those with part-time or no jobs at all.
Similar trends were noted in studies conducted in Great Britain, Australia and Japan, suggesting that the "sex slump" is sweeping the developed world.
