The Opinions - Gen Z-ers Are Ditching Sex. They Might Be On to Something.

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

Data shows that Gen Z is in a sex recession. Technology, #MeToo and a growing emphasis on platonic relationships are reshaping how many people think about sex. As anxiety grows over falling birthrates and changing behaviors, Nadja Spiegelman, a Times Opinion culture editor, speaks with the journalists and researchers Carter Sherman and Christine Emba about why this shift might not be such a bad thing. Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek and Annie Galvin. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Video editing by Steph Khoury. The postproduction manager is Mike Puretz. Original music by Pat McCusker. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Video is Jonah M. Kessel. The deputy director of Opinion Shows is Alison Bruzek. The director of Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Men are getting dating advice that is also really negative about women, you know, like all women are on only fans. Women can't be trusted. Women only want to date men who are, you know, tall, rich, and handsome. And if you're not one of those. Six, four, blue eyes and works in finance? Yes. We're in a sex recession. Americans are having less sex than ever before, especially Gen Z.

The number of young people who say they haven't had sex in the past year has roughly double. since 2010. And that data has caused a lot of worry. The record level decline last year is leading to fears there may not be enough children to sustain the next generation. But when asked what was more important to them than regular sex, many Gen Zers replied, Gen Z would rather have a good night's sleep than sex. I've been celibate for two years. I've never felt this much peace. It really opens up like a new level of thinking in your mind.

It means no dating, no romance, nothing for a full year. And I was thinking today I did sort of have the realization. I was like, oh, I don't know. This actually might be a lifetime thing. But is there happiness outside of happily ever after? I spoke with reporters and researchers Carter Sherman and Christine Emba, who have reported extensively on the sex and dating lives of young people and the anxieties and obstacles that they're facing.

Christine, Carter, thank you so much for being here with me. Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us. Just to start. In one word or a small handful of words, how do you feel about people having less sex? I feel intrigued. I just, it raises the question. Why? And what does it mean? And I think that's been kind of the guiding light of my reporting for the last several years. The word would have to be mixed. I think I actually feel happy for young people if they feel less pressure to do things that they don't want to do. But I do feel concerned. about what it represents about relationships more broadly and interaction with each other.

So Americans are having less sex, and it's particularly visible among young people. There's one recent study that says one in four Gen Z adults haven't had partnered sex, and the number of young people who haven't had sex in the past year has doubled from 2010 to 2024, from 12% to 24%. And so, Christine, I want to start with you. You've been reporting on sex and dating in the culture for a long time. What are you seeing about the causes behind this trend? Yeah, I mean, the trend is notable, especially among millennials in Gen Z. Gen Z is doing a lot of things less frequently than their older peers used to, or at least later. So they started driving later.

They're moving out of their parents' houses later. They're drinking later or not at all. So sex is another thing that they are doing later than their peers. But I think that the causes behind it are both manifold and when you think about it kind of obvious. I think one is, frankly, the internet and smartphones where there's kind of a substitution effect. You could get dressed up and go out on a date and try and find someone to sleep with, or you could scroll your feed and watch pornography at home and not have to make all of that effort and fear rejection. So I think the technological climate has a lot to do with it. Yeah.

Carter, what about you? You've interviewed a lot of Gen Ziers about sex. What have you seen or observed anything different from what Christine was saying? No, I definitely second Christine's point, in particular, about phones. I mean, this is not a trend that we're seeing just in the United States. I think it's notable that we're also seeing it abroad in countries like Japan and South Korea, which would point to there being some kind of global shared cause. and the emergence of smartphones and the social media that's on them, I think, is a very obvious culprit.

That said, I don't think that there really is just one thing that we can pin the sex recession as it's called on. When I talk to young people, many of them bring up stuff like the political climate. Like, it makes them feel more anxious to have sex right now. Actually, after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, there was one study that came out that found out that about 13% of millennials and Gen Z have become more anxious around sex because of the overturning of Roe. And so I think we really have to look at what is going on overall in the climate when it comes to sex and not just saying, okay, we can just change or fix this one thing and that will fix the entire dating crisis, as some people have termed it. I think that's absolutely true. I think one thing we might do just to sort of set the groundwork for the conversation is I think there are a lot of possible reasons behind the sex recession. I think it would be interesting to just go through some of them. So, Christine, you were talking about phones. Carter, you were talking about Roe v. Wade.

I also assume or wonder if Me Too had an impact on young people and how they were thinking about sex. Is that something that's come up in your reporting? That's something that definitely came up in my reporting and with young people that I've talked to, Millennials and Gen Z. I think one of the things that Carter was pointing out very correctly is that the sort of the entire social environment shapes how people move about, how they interact with each other, and maybe eventually how they have sex. So first of all, we have to know that Gen Z has come of age in a very anxious time, right? There was COVID in the pandemic. Everybody was stuck at home.

Our political climate is frankly insane. And then Me Too happened in 2018, that kind of a formative age for many people in terms of thinking about sex and dating and how to relate to other people. I think for young women, Me Too served as a moment in which they could say, you know, the current sexual climate, our current sexual landscape maybe actually doesn't feel that great for me. And I feel like I'm allowed to say that publicly. There's like less pressure on me to assent to things, which is, I think, a really good thing. I think for young men, however, they became really frightened, actually. There's one guy I remember interviewing who said that, you know, after Me Too, asking out a colleague in the workplace or hitting on a girl in public was like handing them a loaded shotgun. It was really dangerous and could have consequences for him. And I was kind of like, that seems extreme. But I think a lot of actually conscientious young men noted that, you know, Me Too had happened. Women had been made uncomfortable in a number of circumstances that they, you know, hadn't known about. And

dialed back their own behavior, their own willingness to ask people out, to try and pursue sex on a date, to even try and pursue dating in some situations. And obviously, if you're not talking to potential sex partners, it is far less likely that you will have sex with them. I actually think what I found in my reporting is it's different for the genders, as Christina's talked about. But what I found really interesting is when I talked to young men, and I should say for my book, The Second Coming. I interviewed more than 100 young people under 30. I've also covered gender and sexuality for 10 years now. I found that young men actually weren't all that moved by Me Too, and I think this is partially an age thing, which to Christine's point, she's talking about

people being in the workplace. But many of the young people I was interviewing, like they did not remember Me Too, which was sort of a dagger to the heart the first time I heard it because it was so pivotal to me. And there was one young man I remember who 18 years old, grew up in New York City, just graduated high school right after we spoke. And he was sort of talking about the ways that young men in his cohort talk about women. And he was using terms like BOP and ran through. And like things that really are not very friendly to women. Yeah, ran through was really the term that stuck with me. I don't know the term Bop. I mean, is it not appropriate for a New York Times podcast? It's not family friendly. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Look it up on Urban Dictionary if you feel

so inclined after this. But what was talking to me is he said this thing. He was like, you're talking about Me Too and Me Too was about not sexually assaulting women, but it's not necessarily, I didn't understand it as like treating women as people. Like, that's not how I understood it. And he kind of drew a line between like affording women and girls full humanity and like just not sexually assaulting them. And I found that very fascinating because it speaks to me that like Me Too didn't really do as much as we maybe would have liked it to do, that it didn't actually really change some of these more as permanently as we might have liked because, like, people just don't remember. And the thing I will say about young women, I totally agree with Christine, that I have found

that they have become more anxious. And I think part of that is because, for the women who remember Me Too, Me Too helped them recognize certainly earlier than I did, that maybe something that happened to them that was wrong was actually a violation, that they should recognize this as sexual assault or sexual harassment, and they deserve to seek redress for that. They deserve to be made whole. But what these women have also found is that we didn't actually really see that many institutional changes after me, too. Like, we have seen more HR trainings around sexual violence.

We have seen some legislation around NDAs. But for institutions like colleges, you know, we haven't actually seen an overhaul of the way that we address sexual violence. The same goes for K through 12 institutions. And so these young women walk around with a greater knowledge of how pervasive sexual violence is. And in understanding that if something happens to them, their institutions are not necessarily set up to help them in that instance. And that is just a culture of fear. It's a myasma of anxiety.

And that makes you not want to engage in any of this to begin with. I think that's a great point, actually. And I think you're right to point out this distinction between kind of millennials and older Gen Z who might have had their sort of sexual memory working when Me Too happened and a younger generation who did not. So one of the things that I've also noticed as a sort of age and gender. split is in a post-me-to environment where people, where young women, I think, are more okay with talking about negative experiences, they share those, especially on TikTok and Instagram. A lot of women are more open to making reels about, you know, I had this bad experience with a man or I went on this date and it was awful and here's why. And there is actually just a

lot more content about how men can be dangerous or predatory or sort of in, social media kind of dating advice parlance, narcissists or liars or something. And so it makes men feel both scarier and sort of less, I think, responsive to female concerns. And there's a whole dialogue that has grown that is kind of negative around dating men. In fact, it's a term that I think the New York Times has published a number of pieces on heteropessimism, right? This idea that for a woman trying to date a man as kind of a hopeless enterprise, and you know, you might in fact wish that you were a lesbian or not interested in men at all, but alas, you are. And then on the male side of the equation, if women are seeing feeds that are full of kind of negative content about the opposite

sex and sort of descriptions of, you know, unfortunate and scary occurrences that then shape their idea of dating, men are getting dating advice that is also really negative about women. Like, all women are on only fans. Women can't be trusted. Women only want to date men who are, you know, tall, rich, and handsome. And if you're not one of those. Six, four, blue eyes and works in finance? Yes, actually.

I've also heard of this as like 666. He needs to be six feet tall, make six figures, and have a six pack. Which, like, I think is something that men believe women want. Yeah. And when men are, you know, told this by sort of their dating advisors, like the Fresh and Fit podcast or Andrew Tate types or even. even, you know, Joe Rogan occasionally trades in this sort of discourse. They begin to feel really negatively towards women.

And so, yeah, they aren't really interested in being with each other in the same way. I have so many theories for why this is happening that I want to keep moving us through them. One that a friend of mine who's 21 brought up when we were talking about this, as she was saying, Gen Z is facing a lot of mental health issues, in part because of the anxieties of the world. and they are very medicated for their mental health. I think they're one of the most medicated generations, which for anyone who's been on antidepressants, can have an impact on your libido.

And she was positing that this might be one of the causes why Gen Z is having less sex. Has that come up in either of your reporting? So not necessarily the medication effect specifically, but it is worth noting that something like one and four members of Gen Z has been in therapy at some point in their adolescents, which is just way more than any other generation. I think there is something to be said about mental health generally and how Gen Z views protecting their mental health and protecting their space and peace in different ways than their older peers might have.

One of the things actually tying back to the reasons why men are seemingly having less sex than women is that, you know, for many young men at this point, this idea that you have to be the perfect man, you have to be the right model of masculinity, you have to be right model of masculinity, you have to be really. ready before you can be in a relationship seems to be driving a number of men into, you know, just taking a step back and moving into self-optimization, going into monk mode, and thinking that they have to figure out every aspect of their lives before they can start dating, before it's okay to approach anyone else. And so that moves having sex later. And then for young women, there's this idea that, you know, your mental health is fragile. Other people can be anxiety-causing. Relationships are, and I think we can actually all understand this, you know, can be really anxiety-causing, can produce a lot of pressure and to stay on balance, to keep oneself safe.

The better thing to do is invest in yourself, invest in your mental health, invest in kind of the relationships that you can control, your friendships, and, you know, maybe not experiment with sex and dating at this time because it seems too stressful and too fraught. Yeah, I think I was looking at a survey that asked Jen Ziers, what is more important to you than regular sex? And they answered success at work, friendships. A good night's sleep was very high up there. Fair. And fair. But to go back to something that you were just saying, Christine, you were talking about sort of the amount of like work and readiness that men think that they need to do in order to be ready for a relationship. And I've noticed in my conversations with young people that much, much, much more so than when I was young, I guess I no longer am than when I was young. No, you're still young. All of us are young.

Much more so than when I was in my early 20s. There's a big focus on the idea of a long-term relationship as this very venerated goal as like this huge commitment. Part of it is that you see on social media these relationships take. huge gestures, financial and emotional. And part of that is just because of how an algorithm is designed to promote performativity or the sale of a product. But there's this idea that a long-term relationship is this really serious thing. And that's much more desired and much more the focus than sort of casual sex. And I wonder, how have you seen the distinction about how young people feel between long-term romantic relationships and casual sex? And have there been shifts there?

I found it very interesting how much young people are kind of dismissive of hookup culture, as they put it. Like when I was growing up as a millennial, I think we were very overwhelmed by the narrative of hookup culture. There was this real sense in the media that young millennials were having too much sex, that they were having sex so casual, it verged on impersonal, and that that would imperil our ability later on down the line to get married, to have kids. And like, guess what, we are getting married? We are having kids. We're just doing it at a later point. And so I think that that narrative, though, has still trickled down to young people.

They saw that millennials got roasted for hookup culture. And now they don't really want to engage in that as much. Like, they do want to be in these long-term relationships. And I mean, I understand that desire. I really do, particularly for a group that feels very alone, having a person who feels like theirs, who feels like who feels like they are going to be a foundation for them and for their life. Like, I don't think that's a bad desire whatsoever. I think to go a little bit deeper into how that narrative has shifted, there was a spate of stories like cat person, the New Yorker short story that was just about a normal girl who goes on a date and hooks up with a guy and kind of, you know, is grossed out by it. And there is a sort of openness to this idea that sort of millennial sex positivity, which I would describe not as sex positivity in the classic feminist sense, that sex is a good thing, but sex positivity in a kind of.

of deterministic sense, meaning you need to go out and have a lot of sex, otherwise you're not a good feminist or a modern young person, et cetera, was kind of blown up a little bit. Gen Z, I think, saw millennials sort of dealing with the fallout of that culture and decided that, like, they didn't want to be part of it. And especially with, I think, some of the changes that had happened in sexual culture between millennials and Gen Z. So much of the sex that people seem to be having, that they're reporting having as kind of abusive or unpleasant, was extremely porn-informed, for one thing. And so they have backed off from hooking up on the same level. But then when it comes to longer-term relationships, there's a term, the idea of the

cornerstone versus capstone model of long-term relationships. And so traditionally, long-term relationships, getting married, having a long-term partner was seen as sort of the cornerstone to your life. Like you find someone, and then you continue to build your life on top of that. Maybe you're together and you go through grad school, you go through your careers, you're joining your lives together. And maybe at the cornerstone, you're not making that much money. You're not that secure, but it's okay. Now I think in this more performative moment where, you know, your big days, your dates are supposed to be celebrated as perfect on social media. A lot of young people feel like their long-term relationship should be the capstone of your life.

That's something that you only do when you've got all of the other bricks in a row. When you're finished with school, when you have your career set up, when you're making enough money, that's when you can go for the long-term relationship. I mean, I do think just to complicate that narrative a little bit, because something that I do think that comes up a lot that sometimes frustrates me when we talk about Gen Z and the sex recession is like millennials were also having less sex. So, like, while we were having all of this discussion around, oh, they're hooking up too much, like, the reality is that they were having less sex than previous generations. And so when we think about the causes of this sex recession, I think we have to remember, like, this started before Me Too. This started before the pandemic. And this is really, like, Gen Z is the inheritors of a trend that began among millennials. So whatever we're seeing with Gen Z, how they see relationships, how they see hooking up, like, we have to be looking at both generations and thinking about things that have happened with both generations.

have happened with both generations. That's true, though, I do think that there's just, there's a shift that's not so much about the having of sex, but the thinking about it in the culture. And for them, I realized, like, when sex is constantly being sold to you as a product, when it's, like, constantly overavailable on your phone, it becomes uncoolool so quickly. Like, we grew up in this very hypersexualized girls gone wild, blowjob advice in Cosmo magazine, culture, that, like, Gen Z is just a little. grossed out by because it's so tied into a sort of like thing that's being sold to them all the time.

But is it uncool to not be able to have sex? Because I think it's perceived as cool to choose not to have sex. But, you know, it's not always clear that someone is making the active choice to be celibate versus just kind of being unable to get late. You know, it's not cool to be powerless, right? It's cool to be in control. And I think like this is why people find the concept of virginity or the concept of being a virginian to be in. inherently embarrassing because like that is a state you can't change by yourself. I think what you're saying about people not wanting to admit to powerlessness being powerless as being cringe and uncool is extremely true. So by you know saying by going out and saying well actually I'm choosing to be celibate or actually I am embracing loneliness and becoming a loneliness influencer or, you know, I'm decentering men. I'm a heteropessimist. You know, taking on the label for yourself feels like a reclamation of something that you might

have otherwise felt powerless about. That makes a lot of sense. And I've been thinking a lot about, for this episode, about sort of the difference between loneliness and solitude, which I think in part is a difference about choice. you're lonely because you have no choice. Solitude is about choosing your own company. But again, I think that that might also be a way of reclaiming power over something that you don't have a choice over. I think that that's an entirely plausible theory. I wanted to talk about loneliness influencers a little bit. Carter, can you explain what a loneliness influence is? Yeah. For folks who have not had this show up on

their algorithms, first of all, I would love to know what makes you immune to this. Like, does my phone just think I am very lonely. But basically what loneliness influences are are like oftentimes women, which I find very striking, who are coming home and are like taking off their shoes and making pizza, hanging it with their cat. And there's text on the screen that says like, this is what your Friday night looks like when you are single and have no friends. And it's very much like selling the idea of a full life without anyone else in it, which I find really fascinating. like sort of inherently contradictory because, of course, this is a person who is broadcasting their loneliness to the internet. And it's always very curious to me. It's like, how much can I

really believe that these people actually agree with the concept of loneliness? How much of these people are trying to, like, change their circumstance? And I think that they're just like such a fascinating indicator of where we're at in modern life, that these are an emerging system of influencers. I think the rise of loneliness influencers speaks to another trend about Gen Z and millennial dating. One thing that has become clear to millennials and Gen Z is, you know, in a post-sexual revolution, feminist inflected, if not feminist, you know, winning world, is that women... Definitely not feminist wedding. I don't think the White House would identify as particularly feminist. No. But, you know, but, you.

you know, a culture in which women are able to exist by themselves, where women have jobs, where women are going to college and graduate school at higher rates than men, where in a lot of major cities, women are earning more than their male counterparts. You don't have to get married or be in a relationship to make a life for yourself. And it's felt as a liberating thing, at least, for younger women, millennials and Gen Z, and perhaps also for, you know, these old or married women who maybe didn't feel like they had as much choice in the matter. And so ended up with the husband and kids and a house and all this stuff to deal with as a way to feel like they were part of and accepted by society. So the sort of romanticization of loneliness, I think also speaks to a

kind of romanticization of the idea that women can do it by themselves, that they don't have to be in a relationship to be happy. They don't have to have a boyfriend to be able to, afford their frankly kind of alarmingly clean apartments. I think we and I are seeing the same woman, Christine. Yes. It's a little bit American psycho, frankly. She has a lot of time to clean it. She does a lot of time. I mean, this is the woman, I think, if we're thinking of the same person, who takes off her lubitons, which she comes in the door, which speaks to, again,

her socioeconomic success, it seems like. But I do think that there is something worrying about the loneliness, influencer, because Because humans are wired for connection, right? It's in our DNA to connect with people. You can become kind of physically and sort of psychologically ill by being touch-starved, by not interacting with other people. And also interacting with other people, whether in romantic relationships or simply friendships, is how you learn about the world, how you come to understand men or women or people in your office, how we, know enough about each other to begin to create a civil society, the idea that we've decided that actually solitude is the best thing that you can have doesn't really speak well for the future

of our kind of shared project. I mean, I guess I just feel so conflicted about these influencers because the first time I came across a loneliness influencer, I was like suddenly flung back to when I was, I think, 23 years old and had just moved to New York and was working nights and did not have friends, like just straight up did not have friends. And I thought about how if I had seen that content when I was that age, it would have really made me feel actually less lonely because I would have realized that this is a life that other people are also living. Other people also do struggle with making friends. And I think the other thing is like when we think about the concerns that we have around young people, not getting into relationships, not getting married, not having babies, which is another whole conversation. People are really worried about birth rates right now. I worry about how much importance we place on sex and relationships sometimes. because they're really not a balm for all of the issues that plague us as a country or as individuals. It feels like there's so much like moral hand-wringing and anxiety about the falling rates of people having sex. And I'm curious why it matters so much.

Like I'm genuinely curious about it. We've been sold this one idea about happily ever after for a very long time. But maybe if we move away from that, there's plenty of other reasons. to be happy ways to find happiness. People who say that they're intentionally not dating, say they're focusing on self-improvement, on paying down debt, on getting fit, on traveling. Maybe there's an abundance of other options for finding happiness.

You know, one of the things that I wrote about in my book, Rethinking Sex, was a sort of critique of how sexuality, having sex, and relationships, and what kind of sex you're having, became sort of a defining factor of our self-identity. It's something that people lead with. Our relationship status, dating is one of the first things that people ask about. And one thing that we haven't talked about, actually, is how dating has changed for millennials, but especially for Gen Z. I think on dating apps, people get a volume of rejection of people swiping past them and not matching with them that is honestly,

unparalleled in the history of dating. You might, you know, 20 or 25 years ago, ask someone out and get turned down. On a dating app, you might swipe through and try to match with like 50 people and get turned down by 49 of them. That feels outside of your control and also feels awful. And, of course, also doesn't lead to dates in the real world. So I think some of the stigma around not having sex and not being in a relationship might also be what it reveals about your sort of success in presenting yourself in this very specific fora that is, you know, the dating world today where image matters a lot. Dating apps are very picture forward, where the ability to kind of transition from the app into the real world is is much harder and feels much more fraught for people.

So I think that what I worry about when it comes to young people not having as much sex or young people not having kids is not necessarily the sex or the kids that might come from it, but actually just what it says more broadly about connection. The first step to having sex or having kids is, you know, ideally being in a relationship of some kind with some person, which starts with just talking to people, having friends, getting to, you know, ideally being in a relationship of some kind with some person, which starts with just talking to people, having friends, getting to, know people outside of yourself. And whether that leads to sex or dating or anything else, just this idea of connecting to other people, I think is still really important. And it's something that we have valued as a society and should value as a society. And if our lower birth rates and our lower rates of sex and relationship are signals that we have forgotten how to do that, or a whole generation is struggling to, you know, make friends. And that is what the statistics are showing us, actually. Younger people report higher levels of loneliness. They report higher

levels of anxiety around relationships, but also around sort of their state and life and security, the stuff that would allow them to form relationships. That seems like a problem to me. And I think that is why I at least have been drawn to this question, because it speaks to the, the broad backdrop of kind of discomfort. I mean, I think the discomfort is a really important part of it. Because I think, like, we, like, our phones can do so much for us that makes our lives completely frictionless. We live in a world of instant gratification.

Porn can provide a sort of version of sex that involves no risk, that, like, almost involves no desire because there's not time to desire before it's actively fulfilled. and now intimacy can be met by our phones in so many different ways. I mean, you can have a very intimate relationship with an AI chatbot. You can have an intimate relationship with an only fans creator who can be texting you all day. And you can feel intimacy from your phone, a sort of version of it. You can get your sexual needs met from your phone or a version of it. And I feel like if we want to make an argument for sex or dating, then we need to be able to make an argument that is actually like four,

rejection for heartbreak. Like, why would you put yourself through the friction and pain of these things? And I wonder, like, can either of you make an argument for that? I feel like if I were talking to a young person who was like, I have my needs met in this easy way. Why would I risk the pain of getting rejected or getting my heartbroken? I wouldn't quite know what to say. I actually have had something of an actual, like this actual conversation with a young person before, which is about, I think it was a year or two ago now, I was following around a group of young people who were at the Jersey Shore, and they were preaching the value of chastity, which is obviously a big sell to be making at the Jersey Shore.

Yeah, I was like, I've got to go report on this. This is so fascinating to me. But I was talking to one of young men, and he was not interested in having sex until marriage for religious reasons, which, you know, I think that that is great. I think that people should obviously have sex according to their values. But what was fascinating to me is he wasn't even dating. And he was saying that that was one of the things he was thinking about was that if you aren't dating for marriage, you're dating for heartbreak. And that made me really sad because I do feel like heartbreak is such a, as you're pointing out, Nadja, like formative experience. Like when I have had my heartbroken, I have learned so much about resilience. I have learned so much about. I have learned so much about

anger. I have learned so much about art. Like I suddenly understood what all those Taylor Swift songs were about. And I just, I feel like it turned me into the person I am today to have gone through heartbreak. And to be able to feel that depth of feeling is, I think, a really special experience that I would, I mean, I don't want people to get their heartbroken, but when it happens, it can be so enriching to your life. And I do think that young people are interested in more friction than they're currently getting. Like, I do actually think that there is a yearning for community. Like, I don't think we have to be making the argument that I was making to that young man.

I think that there is an acknowledgement and acceptance that, like, friction is good for us. It's better for us. And to what you were saying, Nadia, about, you know, the idea that you can get your needs for intimacy met through AI or on OnlyFans. The question that was running through my head was, like, can you really? Like, is that sort of real intimacy? And I think the thing with AI companions and only fans in particular, and this is my argument for friction, right, is that they're meant to make you happy. They don't fight you. They don't push back.

Like, your AI flatters you and does what you want. It doesn't get mad at you or tell you off or say that it's fine, but you know it's not fine. and then you have to kind of figure out what's going on. But those are the things that you have to learn to be in relationship with real human beings. It's how we learn how to move through the world with others. And without friction, you just don't learn that. And I think that's actually a pretty scary prospect.

I want to keep pushing back just because I'm curious. But why? Like why? If it's enough for people, like if it could be enough for people, then like why do they really need to learn about all of the ways you can be hurt and unfulfilled by other people? The argument for friction is the argument for life, you know? Like it's the argument for being out in the world for experiencing anything. And I understand that it's scary and not always fun and feels rough, frankly, to make a pun using the word friction.

But I do think people understand the inherent value of difficulty. And I think people understand that when I accomplish something that scared me or made me hurt or was just beyond what I thought I was capable of, like, they feel good. And in addition to that, I would make an argument around political power. And I would say that, like, many young people are very fed up with our politics as it is. They feel very nihilistic. They feel like things are not going in the direction that they would like. And you know how to make political change? You got to build community.

You got to organize. You got to talk to people. And of course, being on the internet can be helpful for that. But like truly being in community with other people and meeting them and talking to them and being able to have fuller conversations than you could possibly have on a screen, like, that is all essential to political power. And so if you don't want to do this because you feel very safe at home and you really love your AI boyfriend, like that's fine. But if you do want to change politics, maybe you should also try to experience other people. I mean, I'm interested because I feel like I heard you say an ability to be in community.

together is essential to politics. It's essential to any kind of change. And like from both the right and the left, there's this feeling of like we need, we can't just become completely atomized and isolated. We need to know how to interact with each other in order to have a society, a country, of any kind. And yet I'm also just sort of interested in the left, right, divide, I mean, in part because I think it's one of the things that's going on with why young people aren't having sex. Like, Gen Z has the largest political gendered gap of any generation with the men moving to the right and the women moving to the left. But I'm also curious because I feel like, you know, when I was growing up, I associated the right with these Christian ideas of purity,

of waiting for marriage, of abstinence. And I associated the left with like a more pro-sex, sex positivity attitude. And to me it feels like maybe there's a bit of a reversal now. Like the right wants people to have more babies, to have traditional values, where the left is moving further away from marriage and having children and making more room for ideas like asexuality or intentional celibacy. And I'm curious if you guys agree with that analysis. I mean, I don't know that I think that that is necessarily a fair characterization of either the left or the right. Like, I do think on the right, you know, they, the right often gets painted as being anti-sex. And like, generally speaking, they're not. There is a rich tradition.

within like evangelical communities, for example, of promoting sex within marriage. You have the right kind of sex. Yes, exactly. And at the right time. Married heterosexual, possibly procreative sex. Like that is sort of the push on the right. And evangelicals have written a ton of very famous sex guides to that point.

And I think the left, like, yes, there is this sort of feeling that, like, they're not really pushing for sex really. but it's also like these are the people who are pushing for pride berates. Like these are the people who are pushing for a more expansive view of gender and sexuality. And I think what oftentimes the left is really pushing is like that's just not have strictures around what kind of sex is correct. Like that's take those away and that's make it more possible for more people to have the kind of sex that they want. And if that includes not having sex, then so be it. I do think it is a major problem in our politics and in our life how much emphasis we placed on sex is being a separate activity as being something that is a apart from the rest of our lives. And like, I just think that we all know that that's not true.

Like, we do not, when I come home from work and it's been a bad day, like, it's not like I can just go and have sex. Like, my sex life does not exist in a parenthetical from the rest of my life. And I think we know that as individuals, and yet we seem to be unable to grasp that as a political concept. I think for some on the, you know, further right end of the spectrum, which with which I do not identify, frankly, some of the kind of, Heritage Foundation-esque Project 2025-ish characters. Some of the motivation behind worrying about young people not having sex is more about like the right kind of young people, wink, wink, are not making enough babies and soon will be outvoted.

And so they need to get to it so that we can continue to have political power. I think there are other people who are, yeah, really invest in this idea of, It's not necessarily the sex. It's the idea of a democratic society and people being able to interact with each other socially to build a politics in which we can live together and we're losing those skills. And that's really scary. And I think that's something that I identify with. I want to see if we can end in an optimistic place and you're fully welcome to disagree with me. Because I wonder, is there a world in which having less sex can perhaps mean valuing other forms?

of intimacy, creating more platonic bonds with people, valuing a sort of plenitude and solitude, like figuring out other forms of happiness in the world that are not as focused as the millennial generation was on equating a rich sex life with the only way of being fulfilled. Yeah. I think for a long time, for most of its history, America has been focused on the relationship, the sort of two-person romantic relationship, and then the near-nuclear family as just sort of the main segment of society. And that meant that people who were not married

or who didn't have kids felt like they were just sort of off in the wilderness. And I think perhaps that if Gen Z is having less sex and is less centered on romantic relationships, that actually does open up more space for people to explore relationships with their friends, families with their friends. We're seeing so much more discussion about people who are deciding to move in and build communities around their friendships, to have kids who have alo parents, who have

relationships with godparents, friends, people who are not part of the nuclear family, but who are still in relationship with them. And I actually think that that would be a great development. I think we have seen over the past several decades how the sort of closed off. tiny sort of two parents, 2.5 kids, we're the only people who talk to each other, has, you know, failed to support both individuals and the broader society. If having less sex means that we have more relationships with other people overall, stronger relationships outside of the two-person pair, I think that's a good thing. I mean, think we were complaining at the start of this conversation about phones and how much those have really impaired young people's ability. to have sexual relationships. But like, think about how much time

we all spend texting our friends now or texting our parents or texting the people who we care about and are intimate with. Like, we are more connected to those individuals than we ever have been before.

And I think that there's a way to see that as a really beautiful thing. That, like, it is not just that as technology develops, everything will get worse. We will become more friendless. We will not know our families. We will not know our neighbors.

Like, we actually are more connected than ever. And so it's just a question of, you know, how do we want to use that connection. What do we want to build with those connections? That is a perfect place to end. Thank you both so much. It's been a really fascinating conversation. It's been so nice to talk with both of you about it. Thank you. Thanks.