Americans Are Having a Lot Less Sex, Say Researchers. Is Tech to Blame?








US couples are having sex much less often than before the emergence of smartphones, social media and Netflix, according to a new study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior magazine. Married couples have sex 11 times less each year (from 67 to 56) than in 2002. Before this time, the sexual frequency was relatively static.

 The study authors examined the possible reasons for the overall decrease in frequency, such as longer hours of work and use of pornography. As it turns out, longer working hours and visualization of pornography were associated with having more, not less, sex.

 Estimated hours per year American adults had sex, 1989-2014: From the magazine Archive of Sexual Behavior, "Decline in sexual frequency among American adults, 1989-2014"

 Why the rise of social networks and smartphones coincides with a decline in sex?

 Although there are many culprits that affect sexual activity, such as depression and declining levels of happiness for Americans, researchers point out that increasing our media consumption (which offers an alternative to sex) may be a factor.

 Americans consume about 10 and a half hours a day of media, thanks in part to a huge increase in the use of smartphones. 13 percent of Americans sleep with their smartphone; 3 percent actually sleep with your smartphone in hand. 29 percent of Americans prefer to leave sex for three months than to give up their smartphone for a week.

 "The ubiquity of entertainment and social media options in recent decades, from video streaming to Facebook to gaming, can also make sexual activity just one of a number of pleasurable options." - Decline in sexual frequency among American adults, 1989-2014.

 The researchers were based on data from the General Social Survey, which since 1989 has been asking a representative sample of Americans about their sexual frequency. The sexual frequency of married couples remained relatively stable (even increasing between 1989 and 1999), leading to a significant fall towards 2002.
What happened to the connection culture?

 We read a lot about the ubiquity of applications that make finding sex partners easy enough. Many breathless items, such as Vanity Fair's Tinder and Dawn's "Dating Apocalypse," seem to provide a window into the connection culture and the ease of finding sex today. But despite the rise of Tinder and other popular sites in the 20s, the demographics of 18-29 year olds saw their sexual frequency decline.

 "The average of Americans born in the 1990s (Millennials and iGen) had sex six times a year less than the average American born in 1930 (silent generation) when age and time period are controlled. The presence of minor children in the home. "- Slope in S

 In 2014, a sexually frustrated spouse sent his wife an Excel spreadsheet listing all the reasons she gave - such as looking at a repeat of friends - not wanting to have sex with him. She published the list on Reddit and became viral. The incident sparked heated discussions about the husband's and wife's activity, but one thing was clear: there was a break in the typical face-to-face interactions between the couple regarding their sex life (or lack thereof).

 When we filter everything through the prism of technology, problems occur. Around the same time, the disgruntled-husband-using-Excel story was shot, an application called Spreadsheets was gaining media attention. The app sought to gamify your sex life, using the accelerometer and microphone of your smartphone to track the movement and audio levels of your sexual activity.
"We are exhausted doing everything, and never do it, and when we are doing it, we are reviewing our smartphones. Ten percent of people check their smartphones during sex. Thirty-five percent directly after. We are connected to the Internet, and Disconnected from our aspiring lovers. "-Mureur McGrath, from his TEDx" No Sex Marriage-Masturbation, Loneliness, Deception and Shame "

 While there is a wide range of issues affecting sexual frequency, it is curious that a significant decline in couples having sex coincides with a cataclysmic shift in the way we connect with the world and with each other. Our smartphones provide us with a wealth of information and connections, egIt's also an easy way to escape intimacy. It may be time to put our phones and pick up our significant others. "Whenever you check your phone in company, what you gain is a stroke, a neurochemical shot, and What you lose is what a friend, teacher, father, lover or co-worker has just said, meaning, feel. " -Sherry Turkle, of Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

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