Why Is Everyone Having Less Sex? | No Stupid Questions | Episode 138

Key Takeaway

Treat the decline in sex as a prompt to strengthen real-world connection rather than as a statistic to obsess over. Today, replace one low-effort solitary screen habit—scrolling, streaming, or passive browsing—with a deliberate point of contact: invite someone for dinner, call a friend, or plan an in-person activity. The episode’s central concern is not intercourse alone but the loneliness, reduced social trust, and diminished intimacy that may accompany increasingly isolated lives.

Episode Overview

Stephen Dubner and Angela Duckworth examine evidence that Americans, including married adults and adolescents, are reporting less sexual activity than in previous decades. They consider possible drivers such as depression, entertainment and social media, changing sexual norms, and pornography, while emphasizing that reduced sex may also signal broader social isolation and loneliness.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Why Is Everyone Having Less Sex? | No Stupid Questions | Episode 138 from Freakonomics Radio. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

we're animals haven't you ever heard of Darwin I'm Angela Duckworth I'm Stephen Dubner and you're listening to no stupid questions today on the show why are we having less sex than we used to I think even masturbation is down I don't have that number handy I'm sorry so Angelo this is the third episode of our seven deadly sins series we are approaching the so-called sins in the order we chose not the way the Catholic Church listed them we started with sloth then we solved gluttony and now it's time for everyone's favorite of the seven deadly sins which is lust it is a favorite I've read in a variety of sources that in the U.S but many many other countries as well people are just having less sex period full stop and I'm curious why you think that is based on your knowledge of the psychological research based on this project you were working on now this new book about self-control and I'm especially curious whether you think the decline in sex may be due to the easier availability of substitutes for sex including pornography or whether maybe something totally different is going on I have been thinking about this for a little while because I was thinking about things that changed during the pandemic that might still be with us you know with social distancing and quarantining but it turns out I think most of the research was done actually before the pandemic so you don't need to have a pandemic to stop having sex thinking about one paper by Gene twangy called declines in sexual frequency among American adults 1989 into 2014 clearly before the pandemic if this is a secular Trend as it's called a trend that extends for an entire population over years it might actually say something more General about the way we live today in the paper that I just mentioned the conclusion is that the decline was not linked to longer working hours or increased pornography use but I do wonder about porn as a substitute good for sex and even just for intimacy like a romantic relationship with another human being so much to discuss and unpack here so much to undress here so to speak I'm reading from the twangy study after they write that it does not appear that if you measure inputs of pornography or longer work hours that those are what's driving the lower sexual frequency they do say possible reasons that may account for the decrease are the increase in entertainment options like social media and video streaming and the increase in depression I've also read elsewhere that Pharmaceuticals that are meant to treat depression anxiety Etc May decrease sex drive I do know that when you're in a depressed state there's this feature anhedonia the inability to experience pleasure from food or from music or for the sorts of things that you used to take pleasure in so that to me would be probably at least part of the story you're a depressed or you're anxious you don't feel like having intercourse these authors have a good point that when I think what's crowding out actual sex I think porn but just being on Facebook for hours or watching old episodes of friends you know that also could crowd it out because it's just occupying your time and also maybe feeding your desire for social connection so anyway it's not just porn that could be crowding out sex I do remember reading years ago about a paper and I think the paper was disputed to some degree but the paper argued that the increase in the availability of pornography did help reduce sexual assault crimes oh interesting because it was a substitute good yeah that's an argument and then you know economists do like to talk about substitute Goods generally they love talking about substitute Goods there is this research study that was published in 2016 it's called pornography and the male sexual script an analysis of consumption and sexual relations and it's from The Archives of sex actual behavior and what these authors suggest is that actually what pornography gives you is a script for what sex is supposed to be they call this cognitive script Theory you watch these things you're like oh that's what it's supposed to look like that's what I'm supposed to feel and I can imagine how that could be true especially because sex is something that you don't get to watch a lot of people do in general speak for yourself I've got a telescope I live in New York City it's you know Windows just all over side of New York anyway what they go on to say these authors and I'll quote them directly cognitive script Theory argues the more a user watches a particular media script the more embedded those codes of behavior become in their worldview and the more likely they are to use those scripts to act upon real-life experiences then they go on to say that they surveyed close to 500 college men these are young men aged 18 to 29 all in the United States wow that's kind of old to be in college isn't it well I will say most students don't graduate in four years from four-year schools they stretch it out so anyway they ask them questions about the rate at which they use pornography and they ask them about their sexual preferences and their concerns and what they find is that the more pornography a man watches in their survey at least the more likely he was to use it during sex to request particular sex acts of the partner to conjure images of pornography during sex to maintain arousal have concerns about his performance and body image from those scripts that he saw so so the study had one other finding I think it's worth thinking about even though it's just one survey study higher pornography use was negatively associated with enjoying sexually intimate behaviors with a partner so not a pretty picture of porn I'm reading here something that I think is related to the paper that you're describing Debbie herbernick the principal investigator of the national survey of sexual health and behavior says that increases in rough sex may be contributing to declines in overall sex the thinking being that for sexually active people under 30 there's been an increase in consensual choking and strangling during sex which I gather although it doesn't say it right here is derived from the consumption of pornography that's the behavior that's modeled and which may frighten some people and cause them to opt out in other words the model of sex portrayed in some pornography is a model of sex that people see and say oh I'd rather have zero sex not for me so there's another example having nothing to do with pornography or sex it showed that violence declined during the periods where violent movies were debuting the idea being that either the people who might be shooting other people are actually watching the violent movie at the Times they're too busy to go shoot people or it could be that it does serve as a substitute do you happen to know whether in the long term violent movies violent video games increases or decreases violence in a society I have read a lot of research on this topic going back to the invention of TV because if you think about it TV came along not too long before a really really big crime spike in the U.S I did not know that what decade are we in I have no idea when TV was invented the year that pops into my mind is 1948 but it was more gradual in that it appeared in some places and some doses but then it started getting more and more popular and certainly by the 50s it was almost universally popular in the United States and then the crime Spike really began to happen in the 1960s and there were many many many potential inputs to that Rising crime but one theory was that television presented a set of behaviors that might encourage crime and then there were others that argued exactly the opposite but in terms of your overarching question I think it is yet to be answered satisfactorily that is interesting I mean I do want to say this as a psychologist human beings are always learning vicariously more than any other animal we learn by watching what other people do so which way does the causal Arrow go how big is the causal Arrow I don't know but it is true that we internalize and we compare all the time time when we watch other people if you just think about the last hundred years just in the United States the way that sexual Norms have changed is really remarkable between 2009-2018 the proportion of adolescence reporting no sexual activity either alone or with Partners Rose from 28.8 percent to 44.2 percent among young men and from 49.5 to 74 among young women that's a massive decline in recent years that however is an exact opposite of what happened 50 60 70 years earlier we wrote about this a little bit in super Freakonomics we're writing about prostitution actually as a sort of Industry that we studied from the economic and social perspectives if you look back to the middle of the 20th century it turns out that among men who were born between 1933 and 1942 at least 20 percent of them the first time they had sexual intercourse it was with a prostitute so one out of five men born in that period their first sexual intercourse was with a prostitute the argument being that there wasn't as much sex available from non-prostitutes as there would be later now if you think about the same man 20 years later born in let's say the 50s or 60s the shift in sexual mores created a big change in what you might call a supply of unpaid sex consensual sex that may have happened before marriage or outside of marriage and in that generation only five percent of men lost their virginity to a prostitute and it's not that people are having less sex in fact let's see more than 70 percent of the men in his generation had sex before they married compared to just 33 percent in the earlier generation but then in the last couple decades we see this big drop I do wonder if it could be that more and more people in the last 30 years have come to think that what used to be called casual sex just sex for the sake of sex and having fun I wonder if just more and more people men and women have come to think that that's not a good idea that may be true but I believe the statistics also show that sex within married couples is up no it's down I think the data suggests that married couples are having less sex than they used to everybody's having less sex but the share of people having sex within marriage is higher relative to the share of people having sex outside of marriage than it used to be totally agree but I'm just saying like think of your married friends statistically on average they're having less sex than married people did X number of years ago which to me was surprising and I think even masturbation is down I don't have that number handy I'm sorry let me get the telescope back out this evening and I'll let you know yeah yeah I'm not an expert on this but just mentioned that art of Debbie hevernick and one of the findings this is a survey of teenagers was that adolescents are reporting less I think the technical term is solo masturbation there might be other kinds so that may be among adolescents I'm looking at something here that says from 1992 to 2014 the share of American men who reported masturbating in a given week doubled to 54 and the share of women more than tripled but from a low base to 26 it could be teens versus adults who knows but we do know that these Trends and who's having sex how much sex are they having Etc things are shifting right I have to say when I grew up and even when I was in college I was a bio major bio Majors have so much sex I understand oh on the contrary Stephen I mean it's homework really think pre-med does that help yeah not very exciting lives being lit but I remember thinking intuitively that there are so many hardwired things things about an animal including a person so the kind of trends that we're talking about and frankly the plurality of gender identities and so forth I think the lesson it's taught me is that wow there is a lot more plasticity there's a lot more shaping from culture society and Norms the way we think about things than I would have expected like I don't know that I would have believed these Trends about sex going down and you know people going on social media instead of having intercourse with each other I was like oh are you kidding we're animals haven't you ever heard of Darwin but people change or Society changes I want to go back to the piece of society changing that I talked about before what's sometimes called the sexual Revolution or the Embrace among many people at least of what was called casual sex I think it may be that more and more people would decide that it's not a good idea because sex is such an intense and intimate experience that it shouldn't be reduced to what you might call a casual interaction it's just more meaningful than that whether it's inside or outside of relationship and it's almost as if the sexual Revolution for both men and women decoupled sex from Love and that the past decade or two we may have seen more of a conscious recoupling if you will um just a theory I have no idea if that's true I also wonder if we look at the Baseline numbers of the decline in sexual activity when sex in a bad form is in the news so much for so long with the Catholic Church skin with so many instances of sexual abuse and harassment including the metoo movement but well well before that I wonder if to some degree it's given sex a bad name made it seem as if it's usually nasty or unnatural in an activity that's you know almost inherently based in conflict or inequity and if that's the case personally I think that's a shame my husband Jason sent me an op-ed from The New York Times that was published I think the day before Valentine's Day the title of some version of have more sex please and the perspective offered provocative is that we should be having more sex and feel free to disagree because I take your point about the recoupling between sex and love and that it's not just a physical urge but the argument was made I think persuasively that when you have this most intimate of relations with a real person like we're not living just by watching flickering images on our phone vicariously and it's hard to think of an activity which is more like in the Here and Now real it's not the metaverse and the recoupling isn't necessarily at odds with that I mean one of the arguments that's made in this op-ed is more broadly than sex this might be a leading indicator of America American loneliness where more and more staring at our phones swiping scrolling but we're more and more isolated from each other so you can think of its actual relations as being like the Extreme as being like really not completely by yourself I did find that compelling I do worry about people like being in their Apartments having their food delivered being on their phone watching other people have Adventures or dramas and being increasingly disconnected it's like a version of the bowling alone Theory from the sociologist Robert Putnam sexing alone the bully alone book was about how bowling leagues were going down and solo bowling was going up that was written how many years ago at least 15 or 20.

I think there's an interesting parallel you bring up here first of all I don't think many people actually go bowling alone I think they choose to not Bowl yes that's true I love the title but it's a great title I see very few people bowling alone I think they just do activities other than bowling but his argument is that social trust is the glue that keeps the society healthy and that by doing more and more things on our own I mean another example I think of is back in the old days like the Early Middle 20th century people from New York City when they scraped up enough money to get out of the city for the summer they would go to these cabin resorts or hotels in the Catskills my mom was a waitress at one of those by the way oh no kidding yeah and that was a very big Community social thing now people who have the means they tend to go to their own little vacation home and I think about that a lot the way that we've chosen to diminish our circles and I think there are some benefits to that people like privacy people like being with their closest loved ones and choosing who they have dinner with rather than sitting with 12 other people that you may not know but Putnam was making the argument that we lose a lot culturally we do still to come on no stupid questions Stephen and Angela discuss the consequences of the decline in sex from the very beginning I remember having misgivings about lust being a sin now back to Stephen and Angela's conversation about lust I wonder what you think Angie may be the consequences of so much less sex we should say some of the effects are plainly positive the rate of teen pregnancy has gone way way way down way down but the overall fertility rate has also gone down a lot and that's typically not a good thing for society so when you think about the downward Trend in sexual activity what do you think are the consequences of that how is it changing us I probably worry more about the things that are correlated with sex than I do about sex itself like corned beef or what are you talking about it's correlated with sex not a side of corned beef that's what George Costanza was after I don't know if you recall he wanted to have sex while eating like a pastrami sandwich and watching the Yankees on TV that was his sex Trifecta oh I missed that episode yeah most memorable I did not catch that Seinfeld illusion well I found the op-ed of which I spoke the one that my husband wrote to me with the subject line I I like this op-ed for many reasons I think he was a little tongue-in-cheek there was this his little Valentine's note to you like hey honey let's get it on well yes it was the day before Valentine's Day let's do our patriotic Duty maybe so you know the title of this op-ed is have more sex please and the author is a writer who covers sex and culture named Magdalene Taylor and at least according to her there are numerous physical benefits apparently you have better sleep there is evidence that it lowers blood pressure it's good for your heart it's a good stress reliever but I think about the things that are correlates of having sex that are maybe even more important in general I think the fact that you're having sex with another person suggests that you have some kind of relationship right like having dinner with somebody you're talking to somebody about your day and the point has been made that maybe the epidemic we should all be worrying about and maybe one of the worst things about kovid was loneliness and not to undermine sickness and death from kovid but just the isolation I mean I remember this has nothing to do with sex but you know my father passed away in April the first month at least for the United States of the covid-19 pandemic and my mother had been living with my father in this nursing home and not only at his death but also for the next two plus years like couldn't really see her and because of quarantine and so forth my 80 something year old mother was just like completely socially isolated so I guess I worry more about that kind of thing than the lack of intercourse per se yeah I think that's a really good point you know I would love Angela to hear from listeners why do you think fewer people are having sex we've put forth some research-based assumptions I put forth a theory that's based in nothing other than thinking and opinion but I'm really curious to know why our listeners think fewer people are having sex so if you have something to contribute that we can maybe play on a later episode send us a voice memo just use your smartphone to record record in a nice quiet place keep it relatively short include your name and send that to us at nsq freakonomics.com you know Angela I'm thinking now that we have gotten to the end of our third installment of the seven deadly sins series on sloth our first one we asked whether basically one should be more industrious and you said yes and I said not so fast so we're kind of split on that on gluttony we agreed we were like oh my gosh Ultra processed food is horrible and that we should find ways to consume less with lust it feels like we're both saying that people should just get out there and have a lot more sex but presumably be somewhat selective would that be your advice well I think we're voting for love right like we're voting for Meaningful sex wherever and whenever possible you wanted to recouple love with sex and I'm on that team I didn't necessarily say I wanted that I said that was my theory that maybe would explain why people are having less sex but to be fair I like the idea of recoupling sex and love I absolutely do I think there's been a lot of damage done by the uncoupling I think there are massive really you know an economist would call them negative externalities of people pursuing sex for the sake of sex I mean I personally know several people men who have ruined lives their own lives and lives of their families and other people by the pursuit of sex that they literally could not control and so if what we're seeing is a decline overall in sexual activity because some people have got that Pursuit under control I think that's a positive step but I don't think that's driving the secular Trend I don't think it's like sex addicts are going down and then the whole population is going down I will say this from the very beginning I remember having misgivings about lust being a sin I remember in our first conversation now you said you didn't think that should even belong in the list of sins and I thought are you bunkers only a woman would say that by the way because if you're a man you've ever been around a man I think maybe there is a gender difference here I'm like well impulse are you talking about that's so partner how could you possibly let that crowd out your desire for coffee or wanting to read a good novel but as it turns out even a lot of men are susceptible to crowding out from video games and social media and movies and so on apparently apparently so but nevertheless when we put this on the scale when we ask people in focus groups we did find gender differences on the scale so we'll see what happens when we survey no stupid questions listeners but I do think there are many men and certainly some women as well who would say that the drive to feel these feelings either by yourself or with other people it can get you into trouble and that's the definition I think for all of these sins wait you're saying that you used good academic research dollars some of which are federally in taxpayer funded to conclude that sexual appetite is actually a real thing well that was not the point of the study and by the way no tax dollars at work amazing finding down there at University of Pennsylvania good work no that was not the point of the study but my point is that when you do focus groups people say just spontaneously like this is a problem for me because we ask them about their own lives and we should say if you listening now want to take the survey that Angie just mentioned this is the seven deadly sins survey that she put together and is running mostly for our fun and edification the survey is linked in the show notes of this episode it is also on the no stupid questions website the link there will take you to a University of Pennsylvania site where Angie is presenting this survey for anybody to take so you can really learn about yourselves it's not for research it's just for you and the lust items none of them are x-rated I don't even think any of them are R rated so Angela has this conversation today made you lustful are you going to run home and have sex with Jason to answer that question really on the grounds that it may uh agree with your sentiment yeah exactly it was like am I taking the fifth happy late Valentine's Day then we'll say this I'm really glad I married Jason Duckworth this episode of no stupid questions was produced by me Catherine Moncure with our production associate lyric bowditch and now here's a fact check of today's conversation in the first part of the episode Steven says he thinks the TV was invented sometime around 1948.

the TV was actually first demonstrated in public in 1927 by Scottish engineer John Baird then Stephen says that married people have more sex than singles and that the Gap has grown over time but Gene twangy's 2017 paper declines in sexual frequency among American adults 1989-2014 says that the quote-unquote marriage Advantage has shrunk over time not grown finally Stephen says that Seinfeld character George Costanza's quote-unquote sex Trifecta is having sex while eating a pastrami sandwich and watching the Yankees on TV while George's Trifecta does include sex Pastrami and TV he doesn't say anything about the Yankees that's it for the fact check before we wrap Today's Show let's hear some of your thoughts about last week's episode in which Steven and Angela tackled the sin of gluttony with a discussion of processed food Hello Steven and Angela this visit Ian from New York one of the ways I have discovered to control excess is to apply some of the dietary principles of ayurveda the ancient Indian science of Health and Longevity ayurveda recognizes that we need all six tastes sweet sour salty bitter astringent and pungent to be represented in a meal in order for us to feel sated I would suggest that if more Americans try to incorporate all six tastes in a given meal they would feel truly sated after all processed foods have mostly one or two tastes typically sweet and salty hi Angela and Stephen my name is Mike Foley and I live in Richmond Virginia and I love all things processed there's some really good food out there and would ask you to consider the tater tot yummy thanks for the show that was respectively Gideon etra and Mike Foley thanks so much to them and to everyone who sent us their thoughts and remember we'd still love to hear why you think people are having less sex these days send a voice memo to nsq freakonomics.com let us know your name and whether you'd like to remain anonymous you might hear your voice on the show coming up next week on no stupid questions Stephen and Angela discuss the power of Wrath I was so mad that I ripped part the turkey sandwich covered in mayo and everything and I just flung it into all corners of the room that's next week on no stupid questions as part of the Freakonomics radio network which also includes Freakonomics radio people I mostly admire and Freakonomics MD all our shows are produced by Stitcher and renbud radio this episode was mixed by Eleanor Osborne with help from Jeremy Johnston we had research help from Dan Moritz rapson our executive team is Neil Carruth Gabriel Roth and Stephen Dubner our theme song is and she was by Talking Heads special thanks to David Byrne and Warner Chapel Music if you'd like to listen to the show ad free subscribe to Stitcher premium you can follow us on Twitter at nsq underscore show and on Facebook at nsq show if you have a question for a future episode please email it to nsq freakonomics.com to learn more or to read episode transcripts visit freakonomics.com nsq thanks for listening record in a nice quiet place include your name and number sorry and some photos yes exactly we'll see which way we swipe the Freakonomics radio network the Hidden Side of Everything thank you Stitcher