Are Zoomers … Prudish?

When I was coming of age in the 1990s, there was a singular message about teens and sex that dominated the cultural conversation. Whether it came from teensploitation flicks like Larry Clark’s Kids, sleazy talk shows like Jerry Springer, or the abstinence-only curricula that served as many young people’s primary source of sex education, the general vibe was always the same: Teenagers were raging storms of chaotic hormones who needed to be reined in lest they got pregnant, got sexually assaulted, or contracted HIV. 

Even as teen pregnancy rates began to drop and HIV became a less terrifying threat, the message that teens were unbridled sluts who were just one bad decision away from being a cautionary tale continued apace. In the 2000s, rumors began to spread that young people were hopping on the trend of having “rainbow parties” — basically, oral orgies where girls donned different shades of lipstick to flag who had gone down on whom — despite the obvious logistical difficulties that such a gathering would entail. A few years later, trend pieces warned of the dangers of “hookup culture,” which allegedly encouraged young people to swap monogamous partnerships for an endless parade of rotating casual partners. And as the internet and smartphones made online sexual content easier than ever to access, it seemed like the teen sex panics would never end. Everywhere you looked, there was some new threat to fearmonger about: Pornhub! Sexting! Deepfakes!

Except that toward the end of 2018, a strange thing happened. A feature in The Atlantic revealed that, in a major reversal, today’s young people were having significantly less sex than previous generations. After the constant drumbeat of headlines declaring that young people were too slutty and too sexually active, one might expect this news to be a cause for celebration. But instead of welcoming the downturn in youth sexual activity as a sign that young people were finally taking responsibility and keeping things in their pants, The Atlantic chose to frame it as a whole new type of crisis. We were, the headline declared, in a sex recession, and it was a matter of national importance that we figure out how to get the young people knocking boots again.

In the nearly seven years since that feature, the panic over young people’s sex lives — or lack thereof — has only continued. Some of the conversation feels grounded in reality, like discussions of how pandemic-fueled isolation has affected young people’s social development, pushing them more online and delaying many adolescent milestones. Other strains feel like bog standard backlash to rising awareness of asexuality, which an increasing number of young people embraced as an identity. And then there are the truly rancid elements, like the periodic insistence that fascism is taking root among young men because they’re not having enough sex.

But across the board, few people have reckoned with the most baffling aspect of this entire discussion. Why, after decades of pleading with young people to wait to have sex — if not until marriage, then at least until they’re in a mature, committed relationship; after decades of urging them to be less promiscuous and more discerning about sexual partners — are we suddenly upset when they’ve decided to do just that?

Perhaps it’s because, in the grand scheme of things, our conversations about youth sexuality are rarely, truly about sex.

Because while there are certainly metrics and trends that we can look at to determine the general sexual well-being of a population — including rates of STI transmission and sexual assault — there’s no “correct” amount of sex to be having. Nor is there a “correct” age at which to start having sex, or a “correct” relationship style to adopt. And given that, any attempt to draw conclusions about the sex that any given cohort of young people are having is automatically flawed. We may be able to assess that this group was having more sex than that group, or what relationship styles or sex acts were more common during a given period (if we even trust the data collection, given that asking people to self-report their sexual activity is a notoriously fraught system), but which group is better off is an entirely subjective question, one that even members within a specific group are likely to have differing opinions on.

And given that, the endless handwringing over youth sexuality can easily feel like manufactured panic. Yes, we all want young people to grow up sexually healthy. But the way to achieve that goal is to provide thoughtful, honest sex education that demystifies sexuality, emphasizes safety practices, and teaches young people to understand and honor both their desires and other people’s boundaries. Everything beyond that — including, but not limited to, how and when young people first encounter porn, who they first have sex with, and how many sex partners they ultimately have — comes down to personal choices that have to be made by individuals, not their parents or the government or, worst of all, journalists looking for the hot new trend to cover.

Which ultimately brings us back to the real root of the perennial teen sex panic. Adolescence and young adulthood are inherently terrifying times, the rocky moments when children break free from their parents’ authority and start making their own decisions. Watching young people take those first fumbling steps into adulthood is always going to be scary, and it will always feel as though their decisions and choices are “wrong” because making mistakes, even getting hurt, is an inherent part of growing up and becoming a mature, functional adult. And it’s that anxiety, more than anything else, that seems to be at the heart of all this handwringing. 

And we could, as a society, deal with that panic and anxiety in a healthy way, openly discussing how scary it is to launch a new cohort of kids into fledgling adulthood. We could work to support each generation of young adults by empowering them to have honest conversations about all the things that are hard. But all of that is much harder than just finding some new teen sex trend to panic about. So I think I know which path our society is likely to choose.