[imagesource:wikimediacommons]

The world is having far less sex right now.

Even France, globally renowned for going down and getting it up – “the land of romance, seduction, and by extension, of frequent, unbridled sex” per The Telegraph – is in the middle of its very own “sex recession” according to a major new survey.

The poll by the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) found that 24% of French adults aged between 18 and 69 said they had had no sex over the previous 12 months, compared with 9% in 2006. The proportion of those aged 18 to 24 who had never had sex was 28%, up from 5% in 2006. Overall, 43% of the 1,911 respondents said they had sex at least once a week, compared with 58% in 2009.

In general, the percentage of French individuals engaging in sexual intercourse over the past year, averaging 76%, has reached its lowest point in half a century.

These results are mirrored in a lot of other countries. A separate study from last year suggested that the number of British teenagers having their first sexual experience by the age of 15 had declined by up to a third in the past decade.

Japan appears to hold the Guinness World Record for abstinence, with a major survey out this month finding that more than 68% of marriages in the country are completely sexless or virtually devoid of physical touch, underlining the problems the government faces in reversing the nation’s falling birth rate.

South Korea is facing a similar plague of sex starvation, with one out of three adults living in Seoul having not had sexual intercourse for over a year, according to a 2021 study by Prof Youm Yoo-sik from Yonsei University’s Department of Sociology.

The country even has a boycott movement followed by tens of thousands of women who are actively choosing single life. Dubbed 4B, where B refers to the Korean prefix bi-, meaning “no”, its four commandments are: “Say no to dating, no to sex with men, no to marriage, and no to childbirth.”

America, too, is facing a lovemaking blight, with a study noting that adults and young people seemed to be having less sex than previous generations.

Mobile phones and other screens were named as the cause of this change in behaviour. The findings were based on data from the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (NSSHB), comparing more than 8,500 individual responses from 2009 and 2018.

Indeed, the UK, Australia, Finland, and Germany, among other countries, are also having less sex. So, with even France’s raunchy reputation going limp, we’re wondering why the world is cutting down on sex.

The world is definitely having less sex, confirms Soazig Clifton, the academic director for Natsal at University College London and NatCen Social Research. But why? Clifton says one potential cause is that “people feel more comfortable talking about sex now, compared with the 1990s”.

She adds: “Maybe people are more able to tell us that they’re not having sex. There is some statistical work we’ve done that shows we have a bit less reporting bias in our data.”

While this factor was probably marginal, another potential cause she and colleagues detected is exhaustion – at least among middle-aged respondents, mainly women.

“Women are too tired for sex. They have so much else going on in their life.”

François Kraus, the director of the IFOP’s politics and current events poll, says that this data also reveals a central theme; “that there is a growing proportion of French people for whom sex is not an obligation”.

“We are witnessing the deconstruction of the concept of conjugal duty. This is an anthropological sea change because ever since Christian marriage was conceived from the Middle Ages onwards, it has always been presented culturally as the place of procreation, of legitimate sex.

“For a long time, the concept of marital rape was out of the question. All that has changed.”

French neuroscientist and sexologist Aurore Malet Karas says that screens, apps and porn are also clearly taking their toll on physical sex as they cast into question the effort-to-pleasure ratio of real-life hook-ups versus the virtual world.

“Does the recompense of a real-life encounter live up to expectations when you can make less effort and have as much pleasure? People who I consult often say it’s not worth it. When you’re single you have to find a partner, meet up, take a train, pay for a meal, have a conversation and all that for a result that may not be up to the mark.”

Gwladys, a 49-year-old teacher in a Parisian lycée noticed another reason could be the “explosion in the use of sex toys, notably vibrators for women”:

“Before you had to go to a seedy shop, now you just buy them online. As a result, solo pleasures are a lot more democratic and widespread than they used to be, certainly compared to 2009. All my friends have one. Five minutes in the shower and off you go. That can lead to a drop in the need to have sex.”

Wars and eco-anxiety are also additional factors – who wants to make babies or perform an act of procreation when the ice is melting, the sea is rising, wars are raging, and politicians aren’t even giving women a choice over their own bodies?

Ja, no thanks.

[source:telegraph]