The New Abstinence: Are We Swiping Right on Puritanism?
When the Archives of Sexual Behavior reported that Americans are having nine fewer rolls in the hay per year compared to the 1990s, I had to pause. Nine fewer? That’s not a dry spell — that’s a generational drought. If the ’90s were Friends, sex was always just one sarcastic quip away. Monica and Chandler could barely keep their clothes on between snark. Fast-forward to today, and the vibe is more Euphoria: glitter, angst, sexual expression everywhere… but somehow, far less actual penetration. Millennials, to be fair, weren’t exactly the sex gods of pop culture fantasy either. Despite being branded as Tinder’s “hookup generation,” the General Social Survey showed Millennials were having less sex than Gen X. We swiped, we sexted, we curated the perfect playlist — only to ghost each other before dessert. Then came Gen Z. The supposed chaos agents of hypersexual liberation. The Feeld/Kinsey Institute’s State of Dating report finds nearly half of Gen Z are single, compared to only a fifth ...