I’m 31 — my generation are too tired to have sex
February 4, 2026
Last Friday night I got into bed at 8.30pm. I’d had dinner, washed my face and brushed my teeth, just as I’d done the previous three nights. “OMG I’ve done exactly same,” texted a female friend, who sent me a selfie from her bed after I’d confessed about my wild evening. Both of us, I should add, are single and would quite like boyfriends. And yet there we were: moisturised and alone. “I’m too tired to find someone to have sex with, I just want to sleep,” I sighed to her in a voice note. She replied immediately: “Let’s get that tattooed.”
This is common chatter among our generation. At 31 I’m what I like to call “a baby millennial” in that I’m just a few years away from being classified as Gen Z, a group I find myself feeling increasingly aligned with now that research has found that, like me, they’re too knackered to get laid. According to a survey of 2,000 Britons conducted by the drinks brand Unrooted, 73 per cent of young people feel constantly exhausted, with 26 per cent claiming they don’t have the energy for sex.
