Why Millennials Are Having Less Sex

Millennials are less sexually active as young adults than previous generations were. On the surface, that looks great: They appear to be less disposed toward risky behaviors, better at saying no to unwanted encounters, more motivated to study, work and make money, which could lead to more financially secure, happier families. Yet there could be an ugly side to this that could turn what looks like increased responsibility into a demographic threat.

According to a paper by Jean Twenge of San Diego State University and her colleagues Ryna Sherman and Brooke Wells, published on Tuesday in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, 15 percent of 20 to 24-year-old Americans born in the 1990s have had no sexual partners after their 18th birthday, compared with just 6 percent of people born in the 1960s at the same age. This is in line with previous research showing that those millennials who do have sex tend to have less or it and fewer partners. And when they do hook up, in most cases they have the kind of sex that Bill Clinton memorably refused to recognize as such: according to a recent study by Arielle Kuperberg of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, only a minority of U.S. college undergraduates say they had penetrative sex during their most recent hook-up.