America’s Sex Recession
February 14, 2025
According to sociologist Lyman Stone in an article published at the Institute for Family Studies, sexlessness “skyrocketed” between the late 2010s and the early 2020s, roughly doubling for young men and increasing by 50% for young women. According to data gleaned from the National Survey of Family Growth, there has been an unprecedented rise in celibacy among those in the 22-34 age bracket, the period of life in which most people have historically gotten married. About a third of male and female respondents reported that they had not been intimate with anyone in the past three months, with about 24% of men and 13% of women reporting it had been at least a year. Of the respondents, 10% of men and 7% of women said they were virgins. All of these numbers are up significantly from 2013.
On one hand, the decline of hookup culture is clearly a good thing. Casual sex reliably produces personal and social brokenness, fuels demand for abortions, and increases the epidemics of fatherlessness and sexual infections. However, as Stone is careful to clarify, these surveys do not reflect a sudden outbreak of chastity. Rather, this “sex recession” has been “driven mostly by a decline in the number of males with one female partner” or long-term relationships. In other words, young people are not forming the same bonds, particularly marriage, that were once far more common.
