You might think that the 2010s were the most hedonistic of times.
Certainly, at a casual glance they must have seemed that way. Dating apps brought hookups within a swipe’s reach. Americans’ attitudes toward sex and relationships grew surprisingly radical. TV was outright Dionysian. A Victorian time traveler to our decade would have expected to find a constant, ceaseless orgy.
But despite the surge in sexual freedoms — or, perhaps, because of them — we’ve somehow emerged more buttoned-up than ever.
Let’s start by taking a look at the biggest shifts of the past 10 years. 2012 marked the launch of Tinder, an app similar in style to 2009’s Grindr, which simplified sex between gay and bisexual men. “Best-known for facilitating hookups,” according to Wired magazine, Tinder has been used by some 50 million people since its launch.
And users talked, pretty casually, about using it. Sex no longer seemed taboo between any consenting adult parties — a Gallup poll from 2018 found 74 percent of people thought that premarital sex was morally acceptable — and online dating became less fringe. In 2018, eHarmony reported 40 percent of Americans use online dating sites, and the number of 18- to 24-year-olds using online dating sites jumped dramatically from 10 percent in 2013 to 27 percent in 2015, according to Pew Research Center.
Suddenly, anyone could, theoretically, find someone willing to have sex with them, for free, without even having to venture out to a singles bar.
Hooking up also poses less risk than it might have 20 years ago. HIV was reported cured in a second patient in March of 2019, giving hope to the 37.9 million people worldwide suffering from the virus. And, thanks in part to innovations like Truvada for PreP, a pill approved in 2012 that reduces the risk of getting HIV by sexual transmission by 99 percent, new cases are at an all-time low.
And sex with people of the same sex, too, grew more acceptable than ever. Gay marriage was legalized in 2015. Wholesome country legend Dolly Parton is currently showing happy gay couples and non-binary people in her Netflix series “Heartstrings.” A study of teens in 2016 by trend forecasting agency J. Walter Thompson Innovation Group found that only 48 percent of them identified as “exclusively heterosexual.”
Clearly, we’ve grown very liberated in our attitudes about sex.
Technology helped with that. DrEd.com, a health website, found that 27 percent of American adults ages 45 and up had sent nudes to a lucky recipient in 2017. People can feel a little more confident sending those, since 46 states and DC have instituted “revenge porn laws” punishing nonconsensual pornography. Now, if a bitter ex leaks your photos online, there’s legal recourse, and it’s generally considered a misdemeanor (or felony, if you’re underage).
How is it that the sexy apps and culture of permissiveness didn’t result in more sex?
So feel free to send those racy photos to a special someone — or someones, given that, according to a Gallup poll from 2017, acceptance of polygamy in America was at a record high. And 58 percent of nonreligious Americans think that polyamory is morally acceptable according to a YouGov survey from 2015. Earlier this month, this paper reported on a pregnant woman who is planning to raise her infant with her four male partners.
Knowing all of this, the 2010s should have been the absolute best of times for people who want to experiment sexually. So how is it that the sexy apps and culture of permissiveness didn’t result in more sex?
Millennials, it turns out, are having less sex than any generation in 60 years. A study by Jean M. Twenge published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found more than twice as many millennials born in the 1990s (15 percent) had no sexual partners compared to Gen Xers born in the 1960s (6 percent). And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance, the number of teens having sex in high school has dropped from 54 percent in 1991 to 40 percent in 2017.
If anything, despite the depictions of young people having extremely adventurous sex lives on shows like “Riverdale” and “Euphoria,” teens are pretty mild-mannered compared to their elders. “Tuca & Bertie” writer Gonzalo Cordova said it best in a tweet:
“30 YEAR OLD TV WRITER: My show is a neon-colored teen drama about a group of polyamorous high schoolers, obsessed with sexting and sending nudes, who must solve a murder after their best friend dies at a sex party.
ACTUAL TEEN: *is a virgin that watches The Office*”
The kids aren’t even making out with a sexy Tinder hookup while watching Netflix: According to a Match.com survey, only 11% of millennials and Get Zers date casually.
Part of that may have to do with increased caution as a result of the #MeToo movement, in which many women came forward with stories of being sexually harassed. Many colleges, including Harvard, now mandate that students complete online sexual harassment training. Young people know that they should look for “enthusiastic consent” with their partners.
Yet while an NPR headline rather miserably bemoaned that “Young Americans are Retreating From Intimacy,” young people still want someone to watch Netflix with them. According to the Singles in America survey by Match.com, 60 percent of singles claim they’re motivated to find a long-term companion. It’s just taking longer: The average age of marriage in 2017 was 29.5 for men and 27.4 for women. Young couples are also taking more time to get to know each other — an average of six and a half years, according to an eHarmony survey — before tying the knot.
In other words, no one is pressured into marrying the first person they have sex with anymore. That’s a good thing, if you’re looking for a long-lasting relationship. It’s likely one reason the divorce rate in America dropped 18 percent between 2008 and 2016.
It seems that, after years of concern that removing taboos around sex would lead to a generation of lust-mad satyrs, what actually emerged was an almost passive generation of people who are concerned about both partners having a good time, and interested in settling down until death do them part.
Forbidden fruit may have been more appealing in the past not because it was so sweet, but only because it was forbidden.