By Ellen Scott

We Need a Sexual Revolution, But Whose?

Exhaustion versus desire

Why, in an era of unprecedented sexual openness, does actual intimacy feel so hard to access? Apparently, The Telegraph has an answer. According to a recent article, Gen Z need to stop being so terribly, terribly sensible and start bonking like the world depends on it. Ellen Scott has a different theory.

I've been a digital journalist for over a decade. I know that a critique of Gen Z plus a story about sex is the magic formula to attract eyeballs and digital engagement. Declaring that Gen Z needs to "get over themselves, and start bonking like the world depends on it" comes as zero surprise to me. This is just a fresh spin on the old, attention-grabbing stories of how millennials are killing marmalade/marriage/motorbikes, that we all wrote ten years back.

If there's one thing that unites us through the centuries, it's our enjoyment of bashing the generations that sit above and below us. We generation-bash for the same reasons we like to class ourselves as introverts and Aquarians: putting ourselves in one group and then criticising a group other than our own is a shortcut to a sense of belonging. And it's fun. Young people pose a threat to our sense of coolness, casting us as out of touch by their entry into the control centre of culture, and so any way to knock them down a peg is eagerly snatched up.

And sex forms an ideal, fascinating battleground. It's got the dual benefit of being a common ground, we all have a relationship to sex, so we all feel like qualified critics of other people's sexual proclivities, while having the shiny, secretive sheen of something that primarily happens behind closed doors. We all want to peep through the keyhole, not only for salacious purposes but also as a handy benchmark: what are they up to in there? Do they do it the same way I do? Am I normal?

“Instead of shaming the youths as boring, I think we should see the cross-generational damp squibs of our sex lives as a symptom of a more pressing issue.”

So, when the media is looking for a means to bash the younger generation, sex does the job perfectly. The truth is, The Telegraph's column does have data behind it, some moral panic, and a catchy headline proposing that we need a sexual revolution. I actually agree. But Gen Z aren't the ones that need to change things up. Instead of shaming the youths as boring, I think we should see the cross-generational damp squibs of our sex lives as a symptom of a more pressing issue: the way our lives have been greedily gobbled up by the demands of work.

First, though, let’s address the claims that Gen Z are having rubbish sex. There is indeed evidence to suggest that young people are having less sex than previous generations – a survey of students in 2021 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention saw a 17% drop in the number that had ever had sex compared to ten years prior, while a 2022 survey by the Kinsey Institute found that one in four Gen Z-ers had never experienced sex with another person. Another survey points to a drop in frequency: while Gen X and millennials reported having had sex five times in the month prior, Gen Z averaged just three sessions.

“For a long time, there was a lot of shame about not being sexually active. We're seeing that more people are willing to talk about whether they're having sex or not. ”

But quantity is not the same as quality. A lower tally of encounters doesn't mean that Gen Z are a bunch of boring, sexless freaks in need of something as drastic as a sexual revolution.

The same study that found the frequency of Gen Z's sexual exploits was lower also found that Gen Z were the most satisfied with their sex lives. They're also the kinkiest generation. The lower regularity of sex is likely down to the higher likelihood of Gen Z to be single. As the executive director of the Kinsey Institute, Dr Justin Garcia, tells me: "Most sexual activity occurs in long-term relationships because if you're single, you have to find a partner. Partly what we're seeing is there are more singles in the population."

Gen Z’s attitudes to sex may well be healthier than older generations’. Kate Moyle, a psychosexual therapist, the author of The Science of Sex and the host of The Sexual Wellness Sessions, tells me she’s seen “more intentionality and reflection around sex” among Gen Z, noting that “the awareness and focus on emotional safety, boundaries, wellbeing and communication are much more visible than ever before”.

Gen Z seem far more willing to talk about sex than other buttoned-up generations. It's worth pondering whether the reported decline is in part just an increased willingness to be honest about the sex we're not having. "I'm a behavioural scientist, so I often think: has the actual behaviour changed or is it the social context around it?" says Dr Garcia. "I think for a long time, there was a lot of shame about not being sexually active. We're seeing that more people are willing to talk about whether they're having sex or not. Rather than saying I'm in a drought, people are saying I'm having a voluntary celibate period. It's not a position of weakness or a position of inability."

If anything, it's Gen Z's example we should be following. Millennials and Gen X, with our regular and routine sex lives as part of long-term coupledom, might be the boring ones. The call is coming from inside the house.

“Sex, like everything else, requires energy. And energy is the one thing modern life has become most efficient at extracting.”

But let's get real: I think there is a big, concerning, sex-related problem at hand, with Gen Z the canaries in the dry spell coal mine. Dr Garcia makes an important point about the effort required to have sex when you're single: you have to go out, meet someone, woo them. It's my belief that our modern world is simply not set up to give people the energy required to do all of this.

The rise of the infinite workday requires an always-on mindset that stretches far beyond contracted hours, necessitating early starts and late finishes to have a chance of getting through the increased demands of our jobs. Evenings and weekends have been sacrificed to recovery from the gruelling effort required to navigate a job market marked by insecurity and unfair pay, along with all the life admin that we don't count as work, but is in fact unpaid labour.

Singles are too exhausted to go out and have random hookups. Equally, coupled-up older generations can hardly take note from Gen Z's recommendations of kink and experimentation when their schedules just about have room for a once-a-week, let's-get-it-over-and-done-with-as-quickly-as-possible-so-we-can-watch-TV session.

A sexual revolution? Sounds great, but no one can be bothered. If that's something we really care about fixing, the answer does not lie in chivvying along the youth but perhaps in a four-day week, sorting out the cost of living, and reclaiming the bulk of our time from the endless onslaught of work.