--- title: Why Young People Are Having Bad Sex description: The sex recession should be the least of our worries, writes Maria Yagoda. canonical: https://time.com/6283422/bad-sex-young-people/ author: Maria Yagoda article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-05-31T11:00:04.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:06:32.628Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Why Everyone Is Having Bad Sex (Especially Young People) og:description: The sex recession should be the least of our worries, writes Maria Yagoda. og:url: https://time.com/6283422/bad-sex-young-people/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc0fffff9ab8b0ef8/698a3d6db21a9c40d05074b2/sex-recession-2023.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2265 og:image:height: 1274 og:image:alt: sex-recession-2023 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why Everyone Is Having Bad Sex (Especially Young People) twitter:description: The sex recession should be the least of our worries, writes Maria Yagoda. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc0fffff9ab8b0ef8/698a3d6db21a9c40d05074b2/sex-recession-2023.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- # Why Everyone Is Having Bad Sex (Especially Young People) > Sponsored content. 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(Used clipping mask) Couple with problems in relationship. (Used clipping mask) Getty Images by [Maria Yagoda](https://time.com/author/maria-yagoda/) ## Maria Yagoda May 31, 2023 11:00 AM UTC Despite all the social developments that have made sex easier (the sexual revolution, dating apps, [yassified](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/24/style/yassify-bot-meme.html) [contraceptives](https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/03/business/julie-emergency-contraceptive/index.html)), we still haven’t moved the dial on better. Bad sex has endured. And when I say “bad sex,” I am referring to sex that is quite simply unpleasurable, unsatisfying, or even demoralizing. While older generations are up against many of the same barriers to sexual wellbeing (like purity culture and the enduring impact of inadequate sex education), young people have been uniquely inundated with toxic messaging surrounding sex that has actually disrupted our abilities to feel pleasure. Resource-sharing on platforms like TikTok and Instagram may have positioned young people to better parse their sexualities, but not necessarily closer to building affirming and pleasurable sex lives. As a professional sex writer whose latest research is on maximizing pleasure, communicating with partners, and exploring sexual autonomy, I, too, grapple with the disconnect between the sex I know I could have and the sex I actually have. I now know I am not alone in enduring medium, bad, to very bad sex again and again, even though I know better; even though I own good vibrators; even though my therapist is _this_ close to leaving the field because I “don’t want to be helped.” No amount of sexual know-how or progressive personal feminism could salvage the majority of my sexual encounters. Over the course of hundreds of interviews with sexually active millennials and Gen Z-ers, I’ve found that sexual dissatisfaction is nondiscriminating, though the “badness” of bad sex varies wildly. In fact, Laurie Mintz, a professor of human sexuality at the University of Florida and author of [_Becoming Cliterate_](https://www.drlauriemintz.com/becoming-cliterate), suspects millennials and Gen Z-ers are the most sexually misinformed generations of all time, due to the unprecedented accessibility of misinformation. --- ### More from TIME --- For many young people in relationships, bad sex often looks like middling intimacy upkeep. A 28-year-old cis woman who identifies as “hetero-ish” said sometimes sex with her partner is just “maintenance.” “It’s the days where maybe neither my boyfriend nor I feel super excited about having sex, but it’s sort of an acknowledgement of maintaining intimacy,” she said. A 31-year-old cis gay man told me something similar. “I can tell the times we get short with each other are usually because we haven’t been intimate in a while, and when we do I definitely notice a positive difference in mood.” Then there is bad sex among single people, wherein lack of comfort and familiarity is one of the biggest issues. “I’d say most of the casual, consensual sex I’ve had was in the meh-to-bad range,” a 28-year-old cis straight woman told me, citing “jabby fingering, lackluster oral, and flipping me over every two seconds because they watch a lot of mainstream porn.” [Studies](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6932a1.htm) suggest young people are experiencing growing rates of anhedonia, or the reduced motivation and capacity to feel pleasure. The COVID-19 pandemic made things considerably worse across all populations. Some researchers cite this anhedonic wave as one of the core phenomena fueling the sex recession, as it becomes harder to justify the work of coordinating sex when the experience doesn’t even feel pleasurable. In fact, neuroscientist Dr. Nan Wise posits in her book [_Why Good Sex Matters_](https://askdoctornan.com/book/) that the ever-increasing external stimuli in our environments are not conducive to feeling more of anything, let alone satisfaction. **_Read More:_**[_Why Are We All Having So Little Sex?_](https://time.com/5297145/is-sex-dead/) Research has shown that, in many ways, we’re not just going backwards from the sexual revolution of the 1960s; rather, we’re still enduring the backlash to it. Historian Dagmar Herzog, in her ever-relevant 2008 book _Sex in Crisis,_ explores this very problem by tracing America’s sex anxiety to the legislative victories of conservative evangelicals. “Our national conversation about sex now suffers a tremendous impoverishment,” Herzog writes. “It is simple to find near-frenzied talk about adolescents’ exposure to sexual imagery on the Internet. It is far tougher to find frank and open dialogue about our hopes and fears for our children’s—and our own—sexual health and happiness. There is much titillating talk about sex in America, yet there is very little talk about sex that is morally engaged and affirmative.” Over 15 years later, Herzog’s analysis rings truer every day, with a dizzying uptick in legislative efforts to police adolescent sexuality and gender identity, particularly in American schools, which continue to deprive young people of inclusive, medically accurate sex education. (Republican lawmakers are [ramping up efforts](https://www.newsweek.com/republicans-declare-war-sex-education-seek-restrictions-public-schools-1777650) to restrict comprehensive sex ed. According to a 2022 study by the Guttmacher Institute, adolescents [were less likely](https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/adolescents-teens-receipt-sex-education-united-states#) to have received sex education on key topics like contraceptive methods in 2015-2019 than in 1995.) The lack of pleasure-forward public discourse on sexual wellness is dark, to put it mildly—where are we to learn about and explore and delight in our own pleasure, if it’s becoming increasingly criminalized? When it comes to sexual happiness, young people are still left to fill in the blanks, seeking out our own information from mass content like porn and bad Google results that so often lead us astray in the absence of widespread media literacy. What’s more, other institutions that teach us about sex—like family, church, and school—are largely reinforcing cis-heteronormative, puritanical values that marginalize our most vulnerable youth and interfere with their sexual well-being. Too often these institutions stigmatize sexual pleasure, perpetuating messages like: sex is scary; genitals are gross; sex is for men’s pleasure; sex is straight; sex is just for making babies; sex is for certain types of bodies. A [growing body of research](https://www.plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-st-louis-region-southwest-missouri/blog/that-8-letter-word-including-pleasure-in-sex-education) shows that sex education is more effective at promoting health when it’s pleasure-inclusive. When mortified parents or health teachers teach us about sex, they usually fail to point out that sex is supposed to feel good. At school, talking points stick to the risks of sexual activity, like STIs and unwanted pregnancy. If you’re lucky, and find yourself in a classroom that acknowledges birth control, you’re given the opportunity to roll a condom atop a banana. But even in more progressive classrooms, pleasure rarely comes up, leaving us entirely on our own to figure out pleasurable, affirming sex in a culture stacked to deprive us of it. When are we supposed to learn about intimate communication, which most sex therapists agree is the key to pleasurable sex? Certainly not in high school, or from _Gossip Girl_, or in the moment, when you are laser-focused on concealing the body part you hate most, or mustering every scrap of concentration to pull off dirty talk. “There’s a huge lack of modeling around intimate communication,” Carole Cain, a sex therapist and educator, told me. “The Hollywood model is two people meet each other, they throw off their clothes, they jump on each other. They go home happy; nobody says a word.” In fact, one 31-year-old cis-het man put it to me like this: “Once sex is engaged, my ability to communicate through verbal means goes away almost immediately. I have no ability to say things without feeling stupid. Given that communication is so central to having good sexual experiences, that’s a huge handicap.” This feeling is common. If the awkwardness doesn’t get you, the lethargy will. Communicating feels like work. “I wish more guys were better at sex so that I wouldn’t have to do so much work to find satisfying sex partners,” another 31-old cis-het woman lamented to me. “But I also do nothing in the way of instructing men on how to be better at sex, so I’m not really doing much to combat this issue.” We must respect the calculations we all make surrounding sex—even bad sex. For years, I figured that as long as I used protection and avoided friends’ exes, bad consensual sex was a net wash—a silly, aerobic way to pass the time that didn’t positively or negatively affect my life. But bad sex is not a wash; bad sex matters because good sex matters. Our pleasure matters. Our time matters. _From_ [Laid and Confused](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250277732/laidandconfused) _by Maria Yagoda. Copyright © 2023 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group._ ## Transcript The reason why it's so hard to apologize is because we are designed to see ourselves as the hero of Our Own Story. And when we do a bad thing, we resolved that cognitive dissonance by deciding, we didn't do the bad thing. So being brave and being self-aware and you know, taking charge and saying you don't have to do the bad thing and I'm going to apologize for it, makes you feel like an absolute superhero. I'm sorry, apologizing is a habit like any other habit and just like you learn to tie your shoes. Just like you learn to brush your teeth. You can learn to become a good apologizer. We have a very easy six and a half. Step plan. Number one, use the words, I'm sorry, or I apologize. Not, I regret not. I'd like to apologize. No, say those exact words number to say what you did, don't apologize for the situation or what happened last week, you have to name your sin. Number three is so that you understand why it was bad, why? It was hurtful number for is don't make excuses, explain as much as you need to, but do not let that sort of slip into making excuses. Number five is, say what steps are taken to ensure that this doesn't happen? Again, number six is if you can make reparations in some way, whether that's paying for the dry cleaning, or making the entire staff undergo diversity, and equity, and inclusion training to that. And six and a half is listen, you have to let the other person have their say, you don't need all six and a half steps forever. Situation. If you just step on someone's foot, that's a quick I'm sorry and you move on different situations call for different apology approach. Protocols, if something is quick, a text is a great way to do it or just to get person. If something is a more serious offense, email is a good way to do it. And if you really screwed up, there is something very powerful about a stamp and paper and nice stationery. The one thing you have to be sure, when you are apologizing, someone you have to give them an out. You do not want somebody to feel trapped by you. If they don't, especially if you did something really bad, do not trap them in their car. You know, they need an Escape Route, and you also have to consider does that person want to hear from you, especially if your sin is so profound, you have to put their feelings in front of yours, and that means, you may have to just live with the bad thing that you did, if they never want to hear from you again. An an apology is they regret? They don't say they're sorry or they apologize if I regret something that's about how I feel. A good apology is how the other person feels and what's the other person's emotions front center, about apology or non-apology is also gaslighting. It can be I'm sorry I forgot that you are so delicate and such a snowflake and that you have no sense of humor and that you know, you don't really understand how the Work World works and you do all of those kinds of things that make you question. Whether you're crazy for wanting, the apology in the first place, an an apology does not take responsibility research on apology and forgiveness shows that the thing that people want the most is for the person who wronged them to understand that they did to say that they did and say how this isn't going to happen again. If you're not sorry and you apologize, you're almost always going to apologize badly and a bad apology is worse than no apology. A good apology does so much. It builds Bridges and heals wounds. It's also really hard. So we say apologizing is a courageous act because we are overcoming all of our own animal instincts, and all of our own self protectiveness when we do it. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6283422/bad-sex-young-people/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6283422/bad-sex-young-people/"},"headline":"Why Everyone Is Having Bad Sex (Especially Young People)","datePublished":"2023-05-31T11:00:04.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:06:32.628Z","description":"The sex recession should be the least of our worries, writes Maria Yagoda.","url":"https://time.com/6283422/bad-sex-young-people/","keywords":["society","freelance"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Maria Yagoda","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/maria-yagoda/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/society/","name":"society"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6283422/bad-sex-young-people/","name":"Why Everyone Is Having Bad Sex (Especially Young People)"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Sorry, But You Might Be Apologizing the Wrong Way","description":"Marjorie Ingall, co-author of \"Sorry, Sorry, Sorry,\" describes how and how not to apologize the right way.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/uOTOC0DK/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2023-03-22T18:56:32.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uOTOC0DK.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/6283422/bad-sex-young-people/","duration":"PT4M22S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/6283422/bad-sex-young-people/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```