- Welcome to Forum.

I'm Mina Kim.

We tend to think about sex as something private, but so much of what shapes our sex lives actually happens in the public arena.

Courtrooms, legislatures, the White House, major Newsmaking events.

That's what Carter Sherman realized when she interviewed more than a hundred young people and found the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the COVID pandemic.

Our response to the Me Too movement, among other things, have profoundly affected Gen Z.

They're having less sex than past generations, and the sex they are having can be anxiety ridden.

Carter Sherman's new book is called The Second Coming Sex, and the Next Generation's Fight Over Its Future.

Carter Sherman, welcome to Forum.

- Thank you for having me.

- So when we say Gen Z is having less sex, what do we mean exactly?

What do we know?

What do the data say?

- Well, there's been a lot of data on this phenomenon because I think it confounds a lot of people.

Basically, we know a few different points that are important to highlight.

There is the fact that high school students, only a third about of high school students have had sex, which is down from about 50% back when I was in high school.

In the early 2010s, we know that only one in four adult members of Gen Z has had partnered sex.

And we also know that masturbation is on the decline.

And as you can imagine, that one in particular has stunned researchers.

So the thing is that this actually is not a phenomenon that started with Gen Z.

It actually began amongst late millennials like myself, which is why we can't just point to say, oh, it was the COVID Pandemic that trapped everybody indoors, and people dunno how to have sex anymore.

This is something that has been growing for quite some time.

- And would you describe this decline in sexual activity among Gen Z as a choice?

- I think it is predominantly not a choice.

When I started interviewing young people about this, I asked them how they felt about concepts like virginity, how they felt about the peers, the sex that they felt that their peers were having.

And they all felt like their peers were having so much more sex than they were, and they felt really bad about it.

Their expectations for themselves just do not match the generational reality.

And I think even though this is a generation that is incredibly sexually progressive, in many ways, you know, they're more queer and trans than past generations.

They have much more inclusive ideas about abortion rights and LGBTQ plus rights and are very engaged in the fight against sexual assault.

I think that there is still this idea that, oh, I'm never having enough sex.

I'm never doing sex right, and that makes it really hard to be someone who's trying to connect in the world.

- You've also described them as a generation that's more open, more experimental, but how does that square with essentially what you've described as the sex recession?

Is it that they have these views or they're open to these things, but they're not act necessarily acting on them?

- They are acting on them to some extent.

There is some data that indicates that they are more likely to try out, say, kink, for example, BDSM.

But I do think that a lot of the experimental nature of Gen Z comes in their approach to lgbtq plus rights.

I think in past generations there's been this idea that, you know, you are quote unquote born this way, that because heterosexual the, I think the people were really boxed into this argument because the argument for heterosexual couples is that this is the natural way of being.

So gay rights activists had to say, no, this is our natural way of being.

But among Gen ZI noticed an incredible tolerance and interest in ambiguity and fluidity.

There were many people who told me that, you know, I actually don't really want to label my gender, or I don't really want to label my sexual orientation.

It's not that important to me.

One young man actually said, what's important is that you're hot and you date other hot people.

So I don't think that's bad advice.

- So then tell me about the people you spoke to for this book.

- Well, they were incredibly diverse.

I talked to people from across the country, most of them, all of them were under 30, most of them were under 25.

And I found them through a variety of ways.

Basically, if you were under 25 and I met you, I would hand you a microphone and be like, would you talk about sex with me?

But many of them were involved in activism.

I found them through talking to anti-sexual assault groups, through talking to pro-abortion rights groups, through talking to anti-abortion rights groups.

And I found that Gen Z is incredibly aware of politics in a way that I think past generations just weren't.

This is in part due to the internet, they are so much more exposed to news than past generations were.

And I think it's because they've lived through so many newsmaking events, as you've put it.

They've been through the Me Too movement, they've been through the overturning of Roe, they've been through the COVID Pandemic.

You would expect maybe one of these major events to take place within Gen Z's lifespan, but instead they're getting back to back to back major turns in American life.

- We're talking with Carter Sherman about the reasons why Gen Z is having less sex than previous generations.

And I wanna invite you, our listeners, to join the conversation.

What questions or reactions do you have to the recognition that Gen Z is having less sex?

What defining moments of your generation news making moments shaped your view of sex, maybe aids the feminist movement.

Woodstock, what do you wish you'd been taught or about sex when you were growing up?

You can email forum@kqed.org.

You can find us on Discord, blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, or threads at KQED forum, or you can call us at eight six six seven three three six seven eight six eight six six seven three three six seven eight six.

So then, yeah, let's dig into some of these things that appear to be impeding their sex lives.

And one of the things, of course has been Roe v. Wade.

Can you talk about the effect that Roe v Wade has had or that these young people were sharing with you that it's had?

- I think that we discount the reverberations of the overturning of Roe v Wade on sex.

I think we tend to think, in particularly in the media of abortion as a standalone event, we talk about it in the context of politics or of health.

But what I found is because abortion is an outcome of sex, the overturning of Roe v. Wade has made a lot of members of Gen Z very anxious about having it.

A national study has found that 16% gen Zers are more anxious to even date after the overturning of Roe v Wade.

In fact, one of the reasons I started reporting out this book was because of a young woman I talked to whose sex life and reproductive life was incredibly effective by the overturning of Roe.

Basically a few days, actually I think it was within 24 hours of Roe overturned, I got this message online from a young woman who told me that she was pregnant and did not want to be, she lived in Arizona, which at the time was, it was kind of unclear whether or not Arizona was, had an abortion ban in effect.

And so abortion providers just weren't offering the procedure and she ended up ordering abortion pills online and self-managing the, the operate the procedure within a hotel room.

Now medical experts widely agree that that is safe to do, and she did find the experience empowering.

In some ways she has never regretted having that abortion, but she also felt like she was being punished for having sex.

She felt like Republicans wanted to humiliate her.

And I think that the fear of going through that kind of circumstance has really shaped young people's sex lives these days.

- Well, you have talked about how Gen Z is having to contend with not just the taking away of abortion rights, but how that is part of a much broader effort among people you call sexual conservatives as part of a movement of, of sexual conservatism who hold a lot of power right now.

So can you tell us about that movement more broadly?

Like what it is, how you define it?

- So I define sexual conservatism as the movement to make it difficult, if not dangerous, to have sex that is not straight, that is not married, and that is not potentially procreative because it's being practiced with subpar access to abortion rights and even to hormonal conception, contraception.

And so the thing about sexual conservatism is I think it's really been here in the United States since the first pilgrim showed up on our shores.

But in recent years, this is a movement that has grown exponentially in power.

The overturning of Roe v Wade was proof of concept.

It showed that you can take the blueprint for overturning roe and apply it to many other different areas of sex and American life that this movement disagrees with.

They overturned Roe specifically by passing tons of state level restrictions on abortion, hacking away at access and creating the opportunity for a case to go all the way up to the Supreme Court.

We are starting to see similar things like that.

In fact, we even saw it just a few weeks ago with the Supreme Court decision on gender affirming care.

That decision was also engineered in a very similar way.

- And, and so who would you say are the primary actors of sexual conservatism?

- I think that it is the sort of traditional family values conservatives that we see.

There are a number of think tanks.

The alliance defending freedom has been behind many of these efforts.

The Heritage Foundation has also been knee deep in many of these efforts, and a lot of what Project 2025 talks about actually involves a great degree of sexual conservatism, including the extreme, the banning of abortion nationwide.

- So even though sex tends to be a topic that people consider taboo or like to steer away from, particularly sexual conservatives, what you're essentially saying is that it's is and will continue to be very central to the broader movement of people who currently hold a lot of power.

- Absolutely, and I think that there's this idea about sexual conservatives that they're anti-sex, they are not, they're pro-sex within the confines of heterosexual marriage, and they're very supportive of that particular kind of sex because they believe that that is the bedrock of a particular kind of a American family that they have always seen as more quote unquote natural or preferable.

This is the kind of family that you would've seen in Ozzie and Harriet.

It's a mother and a father and 2.5 children probably living in a suburb.

And it looks a lot like the 1950s.

But the thing is that we've moved so far past the 1950s.

We have the internet now.

We have incredible technological developments and we have a much more inclusive and equitable society.

And I just don't think that many Americans really want to go the directions that sexual conservatives would like to see the country go in.

- So is this how you square pro-nataltism?

Right?

The idea that people should have a lot more babies with the fact that they're also at the same time putting a lot of restrictions that can make the act of having a baby really hard to engage in.

- It is how I square those things.

I think that prenatal beliefs animate a lot of sexual conservatism.

And I think actually the current debate that we've been having about Tism speaks to the power of sexual conservatism in the White House.

At this time.

- We're talking with Carter Sherman about Gen Z, about the fact that they're having less sex and how it's not necessarily organic, it's actually something that's very much driven by political agendas, major newsmaking events, supreme court decisions, and so on.

And you, our listeners are invited to join the Carter conversation with Carter, who's a reproductive health and justice reporter for The Guardian.

Her new book is called The Second Coming Sex, and the Next Generation's Fight Over Its Future.

We wanna hear from you listeners.

What questions or reactions do you have to Gen Z having less sex?

Does what Carter is saying, reflect your own experience?

Has politics shown up in your sex life?

For example, what defining moments of your generation have shaped your view of sex?

Maybe Woodstock, the feminist movement aids.

I still remember Carter as a kid, little kids seeing that Time Magazine cover that said, children having children and how focused we were at the time on concerns around teen pregnancy.

What's one thing you wish you'd taught, you'd been taught listeners about sex Email forum@kqed.org.

Find us on our social channels, discord, blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, or threads at kqed forum or call us at eight six six seven three three six seven eight six eight six six seven three three six seven eight, six more after the break.

I'm Mina Kim.

Welcome back to Forum.

I'm Mina Kim Carter.

Sherman has spent the last several years interviewing more than a hundred teens and 20 somethings to better understand why Gen Z is in a so-called sex recession.

And you, our listeners are invited to join the conversation with your questions about that at 8 6 6 7 3 3 6 7 8 6.

The email address forum@kqed.org on Discord, blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, or Threads.

And listeners, Scott asks, sex is a form of mental and physical release.

If young people are having less sex, then what are they doing instead?

- That is a great question.

I don't know that they, we have data to show that they've taken up more exercise, for example.

And this is actually, I think one of the things that is really important for people to understand.

I frequent don't care if young people are having less sex.

What I worry about is whether or not having less sex is a proxy measure for being less engaged in the world, being less willing to be vulnerable, being less willing to take risks and face rejection.

Because I think that those are incredibly important parts of living a full life.

And so I worry that the sex recession shows us that young people are retreating more into themselves that has impacts not only on their personal life, but on our ability to function as a society.

- Before the break, we were talking about the effect and influence of sexual conservatism.

And I, I understand it is influential, like you even went to an event in New York for young conservatives called Make America Hot Again.

Can you describe it and what people were looking for?

- I did go to a Make America Hot Again event.

The event is basically for young conservatives here in New York City where I'm based, because as you might imagine, it can be difficult to meet other young conservatives in a pretty blue city.

They called themselves, many of them, or the ones I spoke to, quote unquote city conservatives, which is to say they're not as conservative as you might imagine.

And I would say that in general, this was not necessarily a group that was say opposed to premarital sex.

They weren't even, what I found to be very interesting was that they weren't even all that interested in politics or current events.

Many of the young people I spoke to told me that they didn't actually follow the news all that closely.

Instead, they felt like the conservative label was a proxy measure for ideas about traditional marriage, which is to say, getting married younger, having more kids and having a similar shared view of gender roles about a man being a provider and a woman potentially working at ho working less or working or not working and staying at home - Besides even a man being provider.

You also found that women were sort of looking for a manly man that made lots of money.

Can you talk about traditional masculinity and sort of the moment it's having right now?

- For sure.

I think that traditional masculinity was one of the main things that I was interested in understanding as I was reporting out my book.

Because I really felt like young man's perceptions of themselves as masculine, or whether or not it was important to be masculine, drove a lot of their approach to sex and a lot of their approach to interacting with young women.

One of the things that I was very surprised to find is that a lot of these young men didn't necessarily feel like there was a guiding light for masculinity in the United States right now.

I think that we have done a really good job over the last several decades of making it more possible for young women to be career women, to be tomboys.

We really expanded the ideas of what young men or what young women can be, but we have not done the same for masculinity.

And we've kept it actually fairly narrow.

We still expect, I think, most men to be real men or good men, quote unquote, which is to say that we expect them to be cavemen like and emotionless and particularly good at obtaining and having sex.

And I think that that drives a lot of the anxiety among young men, that they feel like they're not having enough sex because of the sex recession.

And that is an, in their view, a commentary then on their masculinity.

- And how much do you connect that to the outcome of our last election?

- Well, there is data to show that when you have anxiety about masculinity, you are more likely to vote Republican.

We know that increasingly young men are saying that the United States is quote unquote too soft and feminine.

And that data, again shows that if you say yes to that statement, if you believe that you are more likely to vote for President Trump.

So I think that there is no way to peel out gender from the result of the election in 2024.

- So one of the things that this sort of threat to masculinity or confusion about the role of masculinity it, it's been described as part of the fallout from me too.

So Me Too made a lot of gains I think for a lot of people with regard to understanding what is appropriate, what is, you know, behavior that you can call out if it feels wrong to you, but it also had a backlash attached to it as well.

I'm wondering if you could talk about the effects of Me Too more broadly and then we can get more specific in a moment.

- Well, I think the effects of Me Too were slightly different depending on what gender you are.

For young women.

I think what Me Too did is reveal certainly much earlier than I came to understand just how pervasive sexual assault and harassment is.

They came to understand, again, earlier than I did that maybe if something had happened to them, it wasn't just like a bad date or something off, it was actually something wrong.

And they deserved accountability for that.

But what Me Too did not do is lead to much institutional reform.

We predominantly saw a legal change in the realm of NDA law and in making HR trainings more necessary, more widespread.

And so those are not things that help young people who are not working.

And so for young women, what they came to understand is the world is rife with sexual misconduct, but there are not necessarily institutions that can help you navigate that or get accountability if something goes wrong.

And that's a profoundly anxious thing to put on young people, right?

It makes you very afraid to go out and be with other people.

The thing that I was profoundly struck by and frankly upset by was I would say that the majority of my young female interviewees had survived some kind of sexual violence.

I didn't ask about it.

It was the kind of thing that if it came up naturally, I would, we would have a discussion about it.

And it just showed me that, you know, this is not something that has gone away or lessened by any account for young men.

- Yeah, - Yeah, for young men, I think it was a little bit different.

I really appreciated, there was one young man who told me that although he very much supports abortion rights and other democratic values, he is actually quite active in democratic politics.

He felt like the Me Too movement was anti cis male.

He felt that young men were being attacked by it.

And I think for a lot of young men, there is this sense that they were unfairly demonized, they were cast as the bad guys, even though they didn't do anything.

And in fact, they agree with me, toos aims.

And I think that there's no way to say that the Me Too movement or really the backlash to it, has not contributed to the political polarization we see between young men and young women.

Today - We're talking with Carter Sherman about the reasons why Gen Z is having less sex than previous generations.

And you, our listeners are weighing in This is no rights as a millennial, one of the moments that awakened my sexual consciousness was the Clinton Lewinsky scandal.

The coverage around that scandal felt inescapable even as a child.

I remember asking my parents what the heck they were talking about on the news, the listeners responding to the question that we've asked about, what defining moments of your generation do you think shaped your view of sex?

There's lots of major moments for Gen Z in particular, not least of which the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the midst of a major global pandemic affecting their views of sex as well.

You can share those of course, at 8 6, 6, 7, 3, 3, 6, 7, 8, 6 at our email address forum@kqed.org.

And on our social channels at KQED forum, I do wanna ask you about the effect of the pandemic.

I know it wasn't, you know, the core thing.

A lot of people think that might be contributing to it, but it is a factor.

And it happened also right after me Too, so, so first talk a little bit about the effect of the, you know, the more obvious effects of having to stay six feet away from each other and being very isolated during the initial years of the pandemic.

- The data is still coming in from what the COVID Pandemic did to us as a society.

And what I actually found very interesting in interviews is young people did not bring up the COVID pandemic unless I brought it up, that there seems to be like a kind of cultural amnesia around the fact that we were all stuck inside for a number of years.

And the thing is that I think it was hard for them to necessarily form memories during that time because of course, if you're staring at the same four walls, you're not necessarily going to be marking these rites of passage in the same way.

So I talked to young people who missed prom, who missed graduation and crucially who missed sex ed.

They did not end up getting sex ed because it was just very difficult to incorporate into a Zoom style curriculum.

I think the other thing the pandemic did is it sort of hastened a phenomenon that was going on, which is the outsourcing of people's sex lives to the internet.

And I think in some ways this could be very helpful.

I think the internet has been incredibly beneficial for young queer and trans people to feel like there's a community that's out there that's going to accept them, that there are other people like them.

But there are some women who I spoke to who felt like the pandemic pushed them to do things that they weren't necessarily comfortable with.

There was young one young woman who, because she couldn't see her boyfriend because of COVID, she felt pressured descending nudes when she wasn't really ready to do that.

And I think that there are all of these sorts of small stories that might seem like little things in the context of a life or in the context of an approach to sex, but they do really stay with people much more than you would expect.

- Lemme go to some calls, lemme go to Marilyn in San Francisco.

Hi Marilyn, join us.

- Okay.

So anyway, I'm recommending a show, it's actually on British reality tv.

It's called Virgin Island on Channel four.

And it is about this age group and it's about how much they feel that the only way they get in relationships is and find out about sex is apps and porn.

And so it just won the best social experiment reality show.

And it is by two women in the Bay Area.

Celeste Hirschman, who is the first master's program at SF State in sexuality, and Danielle Harrel Somatica Institute.

And they're, it, it's just touching a place of young people because it's not sensationalized, it's actually a training to come to the ability of understanding your own sexuality and being able to communicate that in intimate situations and be empowered to own that power.

And, and all of the people on the show, the 12 young people that were there were so appreciative of what they learned in that process.

So I highly recommend Virgin Island.

You can see it on daily motion here in the Bay without any, it doesn't cost anything, but it's amazing.

- Well, Marilyn, I'm really glad you brought that up because Carter, you were just talking about the COVID pandemic and how a lot of people missed out on sex ed and one of the places they went to was pornography to get some education.

So talk about what sort of messages or what they learned from pornography and, and I know they learned many things, but let's just talk about some of the more obvious things because porn on the internet isn't necessarily representative of a great way to have sex.

- No, it's sort of like learning to have, it's sort of like learning to drive by playing grand theft to auto.

Yeah, I'll try to keep this pg, but I think one of the things that internet porn has really done for young people is yes, serve as a form of sex ed in large part because schools are not providing it.

Over the last two decades, the federal government has poured more than $2 billion into absence only sex ed.

And that sex ed does not talk about a lot of things that what young people learn about, like say what pleasure looks like, how you can give it and receive it.

And porn does purport to show that.

Right?

So young people I found are very much listening or watching pornography.

Three quarters of young people under 18 have seen it.

And I think one of the things that really became clear to me in my reporting is that porn has normalized quote unquote rough sex, or at least young people felt that that was true.

They felt that because of porn, that they had to be more open to things like choking.

In fact, if you're under 40, you are almost twice as likely to have been choked during sex as someone who's over 40.

And the thing for me is, you know, if you like choking, do it safely, do it consensually.

'cause a lot of young people are not asked, they're treating choking like it's a normal form of sex.

Like you don't need to ask for further permission before you do that.

And young people really felt that that was because of porn.

- The other side of that is that not all porn is bad.

So were you seeing positive things coming out of people's search for sexual engagement online?

- Absolutely.

And I think I should say also that the science on porn is incredibly muddy.

You can find studies saying all kinds of things about porn's effects.

And so we don't wanna draw too many conclusions from what young people are saying.

I just thought it was really interesting that they felt like this was true.

And people tend to act more so on their feelings necessarily than facts.

But young people, particularly young women and queer people found porn through fan fiction and erotica.

So not video porn, but written porn.

And because a lot of that kind of pornography is written by women, written by queer people, they felt much more seen and they felt much more affirmed in their desires than they had if they watched video porn.

And so that too also led them into communities.

You would not believe how much the one direction and Justin Bieber fan fiction communities and the wars between fans of those singers affected young people's sex lives.

- But it does sound like, and interestingly with this very sexually progressive group, that the overarching feeling that you had from Gen Z is that porn is bad.

- Right?

It is really fascinating.

I was frankly really surprised by that.

I thought that young people on the left would be more open to it while young people on the right would be more opposed.

But no, in general, young people felt like porn had really warped their sexuality.

There's this concept in sociology called the Deep Story, the story that people feel is true.

And I think the deep story for of porn for Gen Z is that porn has done something irrevocable to them.

- Hmm.

Do you think that's some of sexual conservatism seeking in seeping in, - I mean, a little bit.

We are now seeing a wave of porn ban, age level porn bans, where many states have said that if you are under 18 porn sites cannot let you watch that pornography.

And the thing about that is, in practice, what happens is that sites end up just pulling out of states entirely.

So you can't access PornHub in many states in this country.

So this is a sexual conservative, sexually conservative policy that's meant to protect young people.

We can argue about whether it or not it actually protects them, but it ends up impacting everybody.

And one of the things that I really try to stress in my book is that these policies, these sexually conservative policies that are being used on young people, they're harbinger about what could happen to all of us.

Because sexually conservative policies tend to be used on young people because young people feel like young people's sex lives are icky.

They can test out rhetoric, they can test out restrictions, and then they can export them up to the rest of us.

- Yeah.

People are tend to be inherently more conservative about sex among young people than they do about sex among adults.

Interesting.

Chris writes, social media's relentlessly unrealistic depictions of dating our warping teen's understanding of intimacy.

I believe this stunts what used to be an organic and highly personal developmental experience in teenage years where we were talking about porn.

What about the role of social media?

- I agree with some parts of that statement for sure.

One thing that I became very aware of as I was interviewing young people is the degree to which social media helped young people sexually objectify themselves.

They became very aware of their own sexual value because they were measuring it through things like matches and followers and likes.

And it was incredibly corrosive because they were just constantly comparing and despairing when they were looking at how other people, not just their peers, but also celebrities were being lusted after and valued.

And the thing is that the quote unquote sexual value that was being most prioritized, you know, it's very narrow.

It's it a thin woman, a woman who has probably has whiter looking features.

It's a boy who is jacked.

And the thing is that plenty of people don't look that way.

Plenty of people are attracted to people who don't look that way, but social media is not necessarily spreading that message as much as we would like it to.

- And for everything that social media does, that's negative, there's also probably a positive side to engagement over social media for Gen Z as well, right?

- Oh yeah.

It's not all that.

I mean, I do think that you can find, like I was saying, especially for queer people, social media has been just an incredible source of information and community.

I think that social media has really helped the number of young people come out earlier in life.

This generation, gen Z is more openly queer than ever before.

And I think that's because social media, again, has shown them that there is a community out there.

So many young people I interviewed told me that the way that they figured out that they were LGBTQ plus in some way was because they were Googling like, am I gay?

Am I trans?

And that query actually led them in places that made them feel good as opposed to feeling like potentially hated in their own hometowns.

- Yeah.

But I think what you're getting at is just there are such strong and intense and conflicting messages for this generation and that tension is what's really kind of leaving them, maybe feeling a lot more anxious was the word you used more often than maybe previous ones.

- Exactly.

I think on one hand we have these rising sexually conservative policies that are cracking down on young people.

And at the same time we have the internet, which is providing all kinds of forms of sex to young people.

Ones they want, ones they don't want and helping to expand the ideas of what sex can be.

And so there is this organic uprising that's being born out on the internet.

Hmm.

- We're talking about the Sex Lives of Gen Z with Carter Sherman.

We'll have more with her and with you after the break.

You're listening to Forum, I'm Mina Kim, you're listening to Forum.

I'm Mina Kim.

We're looking at Gen Z, why Gen Z is having less sex than previous generations.

And the anxieties they're feeling about it.

Also, why it matters for us all.

Carter Sherman has a new book, she's Reproductive Health and Justice Reporter for The Guardian, and the book is called The Second Coming Sex.

And the Next Generation's Fight Over Its Future.

And listeners, we wanna hear from you.

What questions or reactions do you have to Gen Z having less sex?

Does what Carter is saying reflect your experience?

What defining moments of your generation shape your views of sex and what advice would you give to Gen Z about their sex lives?

I guess they probably get plenty of that.

But email forum@kqed.org, find us on discord, blue sky, Facebook, Instagram, or threads at KQED forum or call us at eight six six seven three three six seven eight six eight six six seven three three six seven eight six Noelle on Discord riots.

I remember the genital herpes panic in the early 1980s and then aids, we tried to be safe, but it didn't always happen.

Becky writes, I think the main issue is the trackability of cell phones.

When I was a teen in the nineties, no one knew where I was.

It must be very hard for teens these days trying to have a private sex life if their parents know where they are at all times.

And Jill on Discord writes, when it comes to heterosexual sex, the gender divide in politics is a pretty significant factor.

Why people are having less sex these days.

People are less willing to date people with opposing political beliefs, let alone sleep with them.

It may be possible that the recent move of young men to the political right has contributed to the lower amount of sex people have been having.

I wanna ask you about Becky's comment there with regard to cell phones, trackability and privacy.

Because when we were talking about the lack of good sex education or comprehensive sex education, you also attributed the outgrowth of that or a rise in that to the COVID pandemic when more parents were hearing what their kids were being taught in school.

Can you talk about that connection, that effect?

- Yeah, I mean actually what happened with sex ed was in general, parents were not hearing it because PA teachers were actually very nervous about the idea that they would be teaching sex ed over Zoom and the parent would hear and potentially take something out of context.

Teachers were also nervous that their curriculum curricula would be recorded and put online, but I do think that the intensity of the oversight on teens cannot be overstated.

Hmm.

I think we grew up in an era, or I would say I grew up with social media, but there was a time in my life where we didn't have Facebook, MySpace was just taking off and we had a much more anonymous life, right?

We could do things without it following us forever.

Whereas I think young people are much more that if they make a mistake, it could be immortalized on the internet.

What young people are very awa conscious of is this fact that they are themselves and then they're also a persona online.

They're narrativizing themselves constantly.

They're being aware of the brands that they're putting out online.

I spoke with one young woman who was talking about the need to post bikini photos online in high school because she felt like men, boys needed to see it.

And that was a key part of her ability to maintain popularity.

And so I just think that there is this relentless pressure on young people to perform online and to create a sense of self that looks happier, healthier, sexier than their real si selves might actually be.

- So a couple of comments here that I'd love to get your thoughts on.

The sister writes, as a parent of Gen Z kids in their teens and twenties, my observation is that straight kids are having sex but maybe waiting longer for their first experience.

I have noticed that by the second semester of their senior year of high school, through the first semester of college, kids are anxious and determined to have a sexual experience.

And Mary writes articles and books about sexual recessions often focus on the negative views of current social changes.

But what are the, some of the benefits of those changes?

So I'm wondering what your thoughts are on those comments, Carter.

- Well, it is true that most young Americans end up having sex, particularly I think by the time they're 21.

Most people have indeed had some kind of sexual encounter that they would define as losing their virginity, quote unquote.

And I think that there is actually a lot of positive developments in the world of sex, particularly as I've talked about because of the internet.

I think the sexual progressivism among young people is really profound to see.

This is a movement that I see as fighting for abortion rights, fighting for LGBTQ plus rights, fighting against sexual assault, and trying to expand the ideas that all of us have around sex and gender.

I interviewed many young activists who got profoundly interested in activism because of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

They started distributing pills on their, they started distributing contraceptive pills on their college campus and they helped one another find resources about where you could get an abortion if you lived in a state where that wasn't legal.

And I do think that because of all of these news making events that young people have gotten, have seen and lived through and experience, they are really profoundly interested in politics.

And they do want to make the world a better place.

Young women are the most progressive cohort that we've ever measured.

Even if men are moving over to the right, we know also that they are moving left on certain issues, much more left than other previous generations.

So if you are on the left and you are looking for hope among the young men's drift to the right there, is that, - So based on your research then, what have you found to be true among Gen Z who are actually having healthy sex lives?

- There are a lot of young people who are having sex lives, I should say.

Right?

I think one of the things that young people told me, I asked at the end of every interview, you know, what makes for good sex?

And they told me things like trust and being a friend and equality was really the main thing that they brought up.

They were saying that, you know, being treated like an equal and actually feeling like an equal feeling like I have all of my rights if something were to go wrong in this situation, that was critical to having a good and positive and healthy sex life.

And so I don't wanna say that, you know, gen Z is totally doing sex wrong.

I'm really not interested in shaming this generation for how they're going about their sex lives in the midst of incredible obstacles.

Many young people are carving out healthy paths for themselves despite those obstacles.

Despite not getting sex ed, despite being trapped indoors for many years, they're finding partners who make them feel valued and loved.

There was one young man whose story really moved me.

He was talking about how he always, he wanted to wait to lose his virginity until he was older.

He wanted it to be with someone he cared about very deeply.

He's religious.

So that played a role and he ended up meeting his girlfriend and he had felt his whole life that he was too big, that he needed to exercise more, that no one would ever love him because of his size.

And he ended up having a breakdown in front of her because he felt so bad about his body and she consoled him and told him that, you know, I've never thought about you that way.

I really love your body.

And he just felt like this weight off his shoulders.

And so I do think that there are interactions like that playing out every single day.

- Lemme go to caller Steven.

Steven, you're on.

Go ahead.

- Hey, so I had a question regarding like the legal ramifications of sex and how, you know, gen Z can kind of perceive that.

I, I just kind of wanted to ask you is, is that a factor?

'cause I know in my generation as a millennial you had things like Tupac getting arrested for it.

You have various people and you know, the news, you know, you had Kobe and things of that nature.

So you know, and also the family court, you know, child support component.

Well what kind of factors are those playing?

- Hmm.

Carter, do you have some thoughts?

- I think the caller's talking about the legal ramifications of sexual assault and potentially the fear of being arrested for sexual assault.

I wasn't totally sure on the child support stuff.

None of the young people I interviewed had children.

They were earlier than they weren't that far along in their lives in that way on the legal ramifications of sexual - Assault.

Well, lemme just stop you for one second though.

Yeah.

So meaning that the concern about having children and then being responsible for child support, if you did Oh, seeping into, you know, the role of seeping into people's comfort with having sex maybe is what Steven is referring to.

But I think also with regard to sexual assault, whether or not these very controversial cases with these really big names that got a lot of attention created questions among people about, well what constitutes sexual assault and so on is also freaking them out.

I'm not sure.

- I do think yes, I think to the child support thing, yeah, people were aware that, you know, if you get someone pregnant and you're in a state that it's not, where it's not legal to have an abortion or abortion might not be accessible.

They were very aware that that could really reshape the course of their lives, which contributed to this sort of post row anxiety around sex as far as feeling like, oh, the lines around between sex and sexual assault emerge.

How do I know if I'm actually getting consent?

How do I know if what I'm doing is okay?

You know, I don't think I encountered that as much because I think young men really felt, and because, you know, this is predominantly, I would say a concern among young men because men are most responsible for most sexual violence.

I don't think that this was a huge concern because they always felt like, oh, I'm not the type of person to do that.

I wouldn't end up in that kind of scenario.

And I think the concern that I had when I was talking to young men about it is that, you know, they were constantly saying, I asked for consent.

And then the young women I was talking to were co constantly saying, I have been sexually assaulted.

And so I do think that there is a disconnect that is going on between the genders about what consent looks like even now.

I do not think that Me Too really changed things all that much in that regard, unfortunately.

- Yeah.

Let me go to call her Elise from Santa Clara.

Hi Elise, you're on.

- Hi, good morning.

I just wanted to say, first of all, thank you so much for hosting this program.

I didn't really expect the radio to be talking about something like this, but I just wanted to agree mostly with your comments, I think on how social media has like affected my generation.

I'm a Gen Z and myself, and when I talk with my friends, just my experience on dating apps and even in real life, I feel like things have become a lot more probably like falls into this dichotomy of like, oh, you know, either we're gonna have like a hookup right now, or we're gonna get into this long-term relationship that's, you know, gonna spiral into nothing.

And that like middle kind of casual romanticized relationship I feel like has kind of somewhat been lost, which I'm surprised to hear has probably led to a decline.

But yeah, just comparing with, you know, my parents' stories and things like that, that's probably one of the things that I would agree most with what you've said.

And I think a lot of my friends, and I don't even know how to start this conversation, I guess there's a sense of like awkwardness.

And even as we're getting older into like our mid twenties, we still feel kind of like, I don't know, kids in that sense, especially around these topics.

Maybe that's just because of how education is or how we socialize now.

But yeah, I'm not exactly sure.

I would love to hear your thought, - Elise, thanks so much.

Glad the conversation is resonating - On the dating apps thing.

Everybody I talk to hate dating apps.

I think that that might be because most people don't really like dating, like if dating apps are bad, so is dating overall in general.

And the thing about dating apps, though that is new is I do think that there is a potential utopian nature to them, right?

Like not only does it allow you to access all kinds of people around you and meet a greater de degree array of people, but you can meet people who you would otherwise never meet who there's this concept of quote unquote intimate accidents, which are the circumstances in which people meet one another and fall in love.

And the state actually plays a great D role in shaping those intimate ac a accidents through things like redlining or the institutionalization of disabled people.

It makes it impossible for people to fall in love across socioeconomic or racial lines, but that promise has not really panned out when it comes to dating apps.

A lot of people are still dating people who are similar to them.

In fact, dating apps, there's quite a bit of degree of racism that we can now quantify thanks to dating apps.

We can see it play out in the ways that people are interacting with each other, who they're matching with, who they're valuing as being more desirable.

And so I think that dating apps really lay bare a lot of dynamics that we've already had in dating for a very long time.

But now because there's data and there's records, we can actually put numbers to those things.

- Well, this is no rights.

And let me remind listeners, you are listening to forum.

I'm Mina Kim, I work with the asexual community.

And recent years have seen a boom in the acceptance of asexuality as a sexual orientation with increasing access to community support, representation and acceptance of alternative relationship models For us, the fact that young people today are more likely to have a chance to explore their desires and find themselves without being pathologized silenced and pressured into repeated unwanted sex has been a turn for the better.

Are there other silver linings to the changing social expectations around sex?

- I did talk to folks on the asexual spectrum for this book.

It was really important to me to include that perspective.

And I do think that particularly for Ace folks, this has been a time where you can be yourself much more.

You can come forward and be accepted.

I think other silver linings include the fact that, you know, the awareness of the news is not necessarily a bad thing.

I think if you're aware of the way that policy in the government shapes your sex lives, you can change it.

And so I talked to a lot of young people who felt like through their activism, they were becoming more empowered in their sex lives and in themselves they felt like, oh, I know who I am, or I know what I want more.

I know what I deserve more.

And they were making that reality true for them.

And I think that that is very, that was very moving to me and I hope that it's moving to everybody.

- Did you talk about the importance of a sense of bodily autonomy to that?

- Yeah, I mean, I think that it was just so difficult for some of the young women who were living in states where they did not have abortion rights.

They were afraid that they would lose contraception.

There was actually a run on contraception right after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

I talked to one young woman who went out and got an IUD like very soon afterwards.

And the thing is that that young woman is also on medication for a mental health issue that she has.

And so she has to, she's afraid that if she ever wants to have a baby, she's gonna have to take the IUD out and then go off of that medication for health reasons.

And she's just afraid of, oh, what happens next?

What if I don't actually have the bodily autonomy I need in order to live my life and be safe, not just with my pregnancy, but with my mental health issue.

And I think that this is a discussion that's playing out all the time every day in kitchen tables, because I do think that abortion is a kitchen table issue.

It's not just a culture war issue, quote unquote.

- Yeah.

Let me go to caller Josh.

Josh, thanks for waiting.

You're on.

- Hi.

Thanks.

I, I was surprised to hear that Gen Z and younger generations are having less sex because here in San Francisco, young people I talk to are more and more open to things like polyamory.

They're having two, three partners at a time, and that inevitably means more sex because of that.

And so I'm wondering if that's just a phenomenon we're seeing here in the San Francisco Bay area, or if that's something that you're guest found elsewhere.

- Hmm.

Carter.

I do think openness to ethical non-monogamy is definitely on the rise.

I is probably more popular and accepted in San Francisco if I had to guess.

The thing is that is interesting about sex is you actually, we have this idea that you know, if you're Samantha from Sex in the City, you're going to be having a lot of it because you're been dating around.

But the reality is that people who are in stable partnerships tend to have more sex because they have a guaranteed source of it.

And we have seen relationships go down over time.

So obviously if you are poly, you might be having multiple relationships, you might be getting sex from a bunch of different directions.

But I do not think that that is true for most people at this time.

- A couple more comments to read before we reach the end of the hour.

Patricia writes, although I'm past the H four reproduction, I'm totally traumatized by the loss of our bodily autonomy due to rose demise.

So I can imagine what it's like for young women, and I can't help but wonder why we don't see many men being more vocal and active around this issue.

Rachel writes, I teach college freshmen 18 to 20 years old.

Most of them appear to be stunted in talking to each other for fear of being cringe.

When I suggested and encouraged doing their homework together, they reported they won't because it would be too embarrassing to ask to beat up with a classmate.

From what I've heard in conversation between students, they're trying to attend rages and frat parties for sexual encounters, but they seem flabbergasted that they could actually find someone to date by talking to someone in class.

Remembering my college experience, my small language classes were a perfect pool for chatting up potential sexual partners.

And Eleanor writes, when I was about that age, a friend of mine told me, just roll over and enjoy it.

But my mother told me that she and my father had a beautiful love life and I knew what she meant.

But since my mom was of the greatest generation, she could not outright say our sex life was nice.

Carter, thanks so much for having this frank discussion about sex with us today and for the work that you've done and trying to tap into a subject that is so hard to cover, which is of course, the Sex Lies of Gen Z.

So the new book is The Second Coming, sex in The Next Generation's Fight Over Its Future by my guest Carter Sherman.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

- And thanks to Mark Nieto for producing today's segment.

You've been listening to Forum.

Have a great weekend.

Listeners.