A Strange Side Effect of Smartphone Use: Less Sex

You’d think it would be the other way around.

Considering that the headlines are all over the internet, you’ve probably heard: research into adult sexual behavior indicates millennials are having way less sex than previous generations. 

Researchers also found that people born in the 90s were twice as likely to abstain from sex in their first few years of adulthood and apparently 15 percent of 20-24 year olds have yet to even have sex. That’s a lot of young people who are choosing the pure life.

Researcher Jean Twenge seems to think people are having less and less sex thanks to their smartphones, especially if—ironically—they’ve downloaded some dating apps. As Twenge told the Washington Post:

It ends up putting a lot of importance on physical appearance, and that, I think, is leaving out a large section of the population. For a lot of folks who are of average appearance, marriage and stable relationships was where they were having sex … [and dating apps may be] leaving some people with fewer choices and they might be more reluctant to search for partners at all.

Reality is harsh. So technology is literally causing us to have less sex, and apps that were (mostly) meant to facilitate booty calls, short-lived flings—and rarely, an actual relationship—turned out to do the exact opposite for most people. Damn.

Before you trash your iPhone and revert to a dumb flip cell, other researchers beg to differ and suggest that millennials are simply a better informed generation which makes smarter and healthier choices regarding who they get into bed with. Either way, people are having less sex, and they are missing out.

Put your phones away and get to doing it.