Why Is Gen Z Having Less Sex? A Panel of Millennials Weighs In

Photo Credit Dan Ming

The kids aren’t fucking like they used to, or so they say. We’re in a “sex recession” according to The Atlantic; Gen Z is facing “virgin allegations,” says Jia Tolentino. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 32% of high schoolers in 2023 reported having had sex, down from 47% a decade prior. And as of a 2022 survey, one in four Gen Z adults reported they had yet to have partnered sex.

Is this a bad thing? And what do we mean by “sex”? And while we’re at it, what do we mean by “Gen Z”?

Usually, most of these questions go unanswered in favor of finger-wagging and hand-wringing over the state of Gen Z’s — well — fingers and hands, and the sexual favors they’re supposedly failing to perform. But on July 8, McNally Jackson took them head (ha!)-on, in a rousing panel called: “Why Is Gen Z Having Less Sex?”

The sold out event drew a crowd to McNally Jackson’s Seaport location in celebration of journalist Carter Sherman’s new book of reportage and cultural criticism about the sex lives of young adults, The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation’s Fight Over Its Future. Throughout the night, Sherman — alongside Sam Cole, Magdalene Taylor, and Justine Ang Fonte — shared thoughts on the internet, sex ed, and the social habits of young people.