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Americans Are Having Less Sex
It's not a topic any of us want to read about (or even think about!), but a study collected over the course of roughly fifteen years has shown that Americans are, sadly, having much less sex.
A Fifteen-Year Study Reveals ...
Data for the study was collected between 1989 and 2014, and the outcome was for people of all gender, race, marriage status and the region in which they live. The outcome is published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.
Facts and Figures
- Per year, adults from the age of 25 and above had about 1.18 times less sex.
- From the early 1990s into the early 2000s, Americans generally had sex from about 60 to 65 times a year.
- People in their 20s on average have sex 80 times per year.
- People in their 60s do it about 20 times per year.
- The largest percentage decrease in sex was seen by people in their 50s, couples with young children, and people who do not watch porn.
- Married couples in general have sex more often than single people, but even those numbers are declining: from 67 times per year in 1989 to 56 times a year in 2014.
- There is one group though that still seems to go strong or even have more sex: people over 70. They had sex nearly 11 times during 2014 while the average in 1989 was 9.6 times.
- From the 26,600 Americans who participated in the research, the majority indicated to be heterosexual.
But Why Less Sex?
Researchers point to a few reasons for the dip. More people are single or single again, and there's a lot more competing for our attention at night. Scrolling, streaming, gaming, and general life admin all quietly eat into the hours we used to spend on each other.
One Swedish politician even floated the idea of giving municipal workers a paid hour off to go home and have sex. Cheeky, sure, but it makes a real point: intimacy needs time and energy, not just desire.
So what does "average" look like for you? And when things start to feel a little routine, how do you turn the heat back up?
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