Study: Millennials Waiting Much Longer To Have Sex, 1-In-8 Virgins At 26
By Benjamin Fearnow: 5/6/18 at 5:40 PM
New research of young adults deemed “Millennials” confirmed a continuing trend that today’s youth are waiting longer to have sex, potentially out of a “fear of intimacy.”
A University College London study, The Next Steps project, tracked the data of more than 16,000 people born in 1989-90 since they were 14 years old. It found Millennials are waiting longer than previous generations to have sexual intercourse. Interviews conducted in 2016 found one-in-eight Millennials self-reporting that they were still virgins at age 26.
Some psychologists and researchers don’t place tie this squarely to social media, ubiquitous technology use or morality, but rather an over-exposure to sex and pornography in their daily lives.
New research of young adults deemed “Millennials” confirmed a continuing trend that today’s youth are waiting longer to have sex, potentially out of a “fear of intimacy.”
“Millennials have been brought up in a culture of hypersexuality which has bred a fear of intimacy,” psychoanalytic psychotherapist Susanna Abse of the Balint Consultancy told the Sunday Times. “The women are always up for it with beautiful hard bodies and the men have permanent erections. That is daunting to young people.”
The fear for young men is of being humiliated that they can’t live up to that, plus the fear of exposure in your Facebook group,” Abse added.
The results of the study echo similar results from a 2013 national survey also conducted by University College London that found millennials have sex an average of 4.9 times a month for men and 4.8 times for women, compared to 6.2 and 6.3 respectively one decade before. Many theories have been suggested since those results, ranging from “intimate” relationships with technology devices to fears of intimacy.
See all of the best photos of the week in these slideshows
“More and more technophilic and commitment-phobic Millennials are shying away from physical encounters and supplanting them with the emotional gratification of virtual quasi relationships, flirting via their phones and computers with no intention of ever meeting their romantic quarry: less casual sex than casual text,” wrote Teddy Wayne in The New York Times.
Other experts have mused that Millennials’ “fear of missing out” (FOMO), pressure to get into academic institutions and an inability to accept criticism could also be potential factors in driving a wedge between today’s young people.
“Millennials have been so coddled by their parents and teachers that they are now unable to accept others’ opinions and realities,” psychologist Lori Gottlieb wrote in The Atlantic. “Which makes it hard when, in a relationship, your reality is that you will go to the farmer’s market and make a healthy salad together, and your partner’s reality is Starcraft.”
If survey participants who refused or declined to answer the question of virginity were to be added, the number of Millennials not having sex by 26 rises to one-in-six people. The research also found that as today’s young people get older they are less likely to have sexual partners and often maintain personal independence much later into adulthood than previous generations.
;