Basically, the statistic I keep seeing is one in three men and one in five women have not had sex in the last year. And this is especially pronounced among millennials and Gen Z. We are living in probably the most sexually permissive culture ever. You don't really have to look far. You can go on any mainstream social media platform and see essentially porn. And so sexuality and hypersexuality have never been more celebrated. But then when we actually look at the numbers, it turns out that Gen Z is actually having less sex than any previous generation at that age. When sex is so overdone, they're not as interested in the taboo aspect of it. The average age at which a child sees porn today is 12. One in seven kids sees porn at the age of 10 or younger. They didn't even have a chance to really develop normally in terms of their sexuality.
Are you saying there's something biological going on? Is it conditioning? Is it all those things?
Most people think people are having sex like 10 times a week, but it's, you know, most people more than once a week is not actually associated with more satisfaction in a relationship. I think there's this trend of younger men not doing as well. Young men are falling behind their female peers in terms of education and occupation. And I think part of that is due to the educational system being biased in favor of girls and young women. Their lack of interest in sex is a reflection of a lack of connection more largely in society.
I'm Dave Rubin and joining me today is a sex neuroscientist and author of Sexinction: The Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy. Long lost Rubin Report guest, Debra. So, Debra, how are you?
I'm well, Dave. Thanks for having me back.
Yeah, it has been a long time. A bizarrely long time. But, as you just said to me before we started recording, when you're writing a book, you hide out. You disappear.
Yeah, I call it going into hibernation basically. And I don't do anything but read scientific papers and write. And then when I'm ready to come out and talk about it, because I want to make sure I know what I'm talking about and that I know what my opinions are and that I can back them up for sure. And then when I'm ready to reemerge into the sunlight, here we are.
Here we are. All right. Well, we are going to talk about sex for about 45 minutes, or at least according to the book, the lack thereof when it comes to people having sex and why they're not having sex, etc., etc. But before we dive in, for some of my audience that maybe doesn't know you, could you do a quick little bio? You've been on many times. We'll link to your earlier stuff down below, but it has been just a bit of time.
So, I am a neuroscientist by training. My specialty was in human sexuality and I used to do brain imaging basically of human sexual arousal. So, I loved, you know, being a sex researcher, being a scientist, but I found the climate in academia had become too political. I wrote an op-ed about gender transitioning in children and being very much in opposition to that and how the scientific research showed that that was actually not the best way forward for these children. Most of them grew up to be gay.
When was that? That was very early on and that's when I first came across you. And now everyone's taking that position, but you were way, way ahead of that.
Yeah, I was pretty much the first person to write an op-ed about this. So, it was a firestorm at the time. That op-ed came out over a decade ago and I remember you had me on the first time in 2018. So, I'm so grateful for you taking that chance to have me on and seeing that I wasn't a crazy person in terms of what I was talking about. And then after that op-ed was published, I decided to leave academia just because I could see the direction it was going in. And I would say also in terms of the field of sex research, I definitely have friends and colleagues who are still in the field who do amazing work and who are apolitical. They're very ethical. But I would say in some ways certain taboo subjects or certain ways of talking about sex, that you're not supposed to do it that way and you're definitely not supposed to counter so-called sex positivity, which is what my book Sexinction does, and basically says this idea that you should have sex with whomever you want and we should live in this really hedonistic culture and deny biology, deny reality, is leading us to actually have less sex and is actually really bad for the human condition because if people are not having sex, I mean, part of my interest is in, yes, sexuality because I used to study it scientifically.
But it's also lack of sex. Lack of sex or lack of interest in sex is a reflection of a lack of connection more largely in society. And so my interest in the book was to understand why are we having less sex? Why is there less connection? What is taking the place? And also, number one, to see is the sex recession even happening because there are people who are denying that it is actually taking place or that it's such a big deal. But yeah, so that's how I end up where I am now as a journalist. But basically, the statistic I keep seeing is one in three men and one in five women have not had sex in the last year. And this is especially pronounced among millennials and Gen Z.
Right. Okay. So you offered me a zillion different avenues to go down. But why don't we start with that? When people think of Gen Z, on one hand, you kind of think of Netflix and chill and hookup culture and apps and all of these things. So in some sense, there would be a way of thinking, oh, they're all obviously having sex and it's just easier and on demand. And yet the argument really is that that's not what they're doing. So how do you kind of put those two ideas together?
Well, the weird thing is we are living in probably the most sexually permissive culture ever in terms of talking about sex, depictions of sex. You don't really have to look far. You can go on any mainstream social media platform and see essentially pornography, if not hardcore porn, then softcore porn or some allusion to pornographic imagery in terms of half-naked bodies of people just posing casually on the street. So you have that, you have it depicted in, as you mentioned, streaming shows and music videos and awards ceremonies. And so sexuality and hypersexuality have never been more celebrated. But then when we actually look at the numbers, it turns out that Gen Z is actually having less sex than any previous generation at that age. And so I think part of it is that when sex is so overdone and so socially acceptable and almost pushed on a generation, they're not as interested in the taboo aspect of it. But I also think because when things are taboo, you know, young people naturally gravitate toward it because they want to show the older generation, you know, how edgy they are. But then I also think there's something happening hormonally because when we look at studies looking at sexual activity, so that includes partnered sex, all forms of sex in terms of intercourse, masturbation, oral sex, we find with adolescents, so this study was done very meticulously in terms of getting parental consent. I always want to be very careful with that whenever there's questions about sexuality involving children. And what they found is that adolescent masturbation rates are actually lower than previously as well. So there's something which is very unusual because for adolescents, they should be coming into basically the peak of their sexuality. So if they're disinterested or they're not as sexually, we'll say their activity is lower even at that stage of life, it speaks to something biologically different or something happening that is affecting us hormonally as well.
Right. So, if people have access to apps that allow them to hook up but seemingly are hooking up less, and then they have access to porn and all the other stuff out there, it seems that that would be geared towards them having more sex. But is it basically that they've atomized everything? Like, you can, I mean, you sort of just gave me the counter argument in a weird way, but if you have access to this stuff all the time, there's ways you don't need someone else to get off. So why would you bother getting off with someone else? But you're also arguing that that's not really the case, right?
Right. So some people have argued, well, previous studies have shown that watching porn is actually associated with higher rates of sexual activity, but that is in older generations and they did not grow up watching internet porn in the way that Gen Z has. My hypothesis is that Gen Z, because they were exposed to porn at such a young age through smartphones, many of them before their first kiss, their first crush, they have no idea what it is. The average age at which a child sees pornography today is 12. One in seven kids sees porn at the age of 10 or younger. And I do believe that age is getting increasingly young. So there's that aspect of it in that they didn't even have a chance to really develop normally in terms of their sexuality to have the choice of saying, "Do I want to have sex with a real-life partner or am I going to turn to porn?" But again, if masturbation rates are lower than what we've seen in the past, it's not that people are just having sex, like say watching porn or turning to the AI girlfriend or using a sex doll instead. There seems to be like this diminished interest.
Right. Okay. So to the diminished interest part, so there's some weird conflict between that it's accessible more and then they seem to be having less. But then are you saying that's environmental or are you saying that's nutrition-based or are you saying there's something biological going on? Is it conditioning? Is it all those things?
All of those things. I think for men, say, in terms of low testosterone rates, which have been happening now for 40, 50 years, research has definitely shown there's this trend that is not due to men getting older. It's not due to lifestyle changes or things like smoking or being overweight. There's something happening in the contemporary environment that is leading men, including young men, to have lower testosterone than previous generations. And so this points to endocrine disruptors. So things like xenoestrogens. So either synthetic or naturally occurring estrogens that are in the environment, in our food, in the water supply. That can be from, say, plastic, that can be from pharmaceutical medications, whether or not you know that you're taking them. And then also for women, I would say the birth control pill does things to a woman's body biologically that can lead her to be less interested in sex and also be less prone to putting out sexual signaling to signal to men in her environment that she's interested or that she's looking. So that's the environmental, I guess, hormonal aspect. But then I think also with porn, because nowadays it's so easily accessed and so realistic and you have platforms like OnlyFans where you can have somewhat of a simulation of a girlfriend experience. It seems like you're interacting with someone, although usually it's like a man in a random country somewhere who's being paid to pretend to be the influencer. But basically because when you're watching porn it activates...
We're going to have to get back to that one because it's beyond me, but okay.
Yeah. The same brain network as if you're having sex. So what happens when you're watching porn is it basically tricks you into thinking that you're actually having sex when you're not. So you're in front of a screen watching someone you don't know or people you don't know, but your mind registers it as though it's real sex. So yeah, the chatters, they are men who are basically hired in other countries to pretend to be these so-called content creators and they'll interact with paying fans. The paying fans don't know that they're interacting with men. Or maybe they do know and they don't care, but the perception is that they're interacting with the content creator, but it's actually a random man in another country who may or may not speak English basically sexting with them and sending them photos of the content creator.
Wait, I'm a little out of the game here, so maybe I'm missing something. But don't they see that person? Isn't the whole point that you're seeing that person on the camera?
Oh, so in that case, no. So they'll send videos of the content creator and then pretend to be her, but it's actually a dude interacting with them.
Got it. So the OnlyFans person who has the page, that's the actual girl, let's say. But then when they're doing this, when they're texting them the stuff that they're paying for and everything else, they're... God, it's... And that's probably not even the weirdest stuff because half these people are probably texting with robots now and bots and everything else.
Yeah, I was going to say the AI companions. Yeah, that's another really powerful replacement for an in-person partner for sure because you have the pornographic aspect, you also have the emotional intimacy, and so you can also customize it so that the interactions are exactly what you want and the person not only does sexually what you want them to do or the AI does what you want them to do sexually, but they'll also respond to you however you want them to respond.
Do you also think there's a weird... I want to get back to some of that, but one of the things that I've mentioned on the show a couple times is that it seems to me there's some weird desexualization of society, meaning because all this stuff that you just mentioned is accessible, people can do all that privately and kind of never talk about it, right? And then in society, like there aren't really sexy movies anymore. There aren't really sexy TV shows. You know, even when Sydney Sweeney had that commercial and finally people were like, "Oh my god, something sexy," right? It was like mind-blowing to people where if you went back to television in the 80s and 90s, we saw sexy things. People talked about sex where now it's like it's just all hidden in this corner of the internet, which oddly is probably bigger than reality at this point.
Yeah, I wonder why that is. I mean, I guess it's different for me coming from a background being in academia, working in the field of sex research where I was almost inundated constantly with conversation about sexuality. But I think, you know, part of it might be this generation. It's also the isolation that comes from screens and my guess is that just more generally people are a little bit less socially skilled than in the past. I think COVID did a number on many of us as well. So that could be part of it and sex is such a... it is a very sensitive topic and it is a very private topic. So even though the culture can push it in some ways, I do think there are some TV shows or music videos or music award shows when you watch the performance and you think, "Oh my god, I can't believe they showed that" or like you listen to the lyrics, it's like a happy pop song and then you actually listen to the lyrics and you think this is really X-rated. I wouldn't want, you know, I don't think this should be playing on the radio. And so there's like this weird dichotomy. But I do think part of it is that especially for Gen Z, and I feel for them, they don't really... my sense is they don't really know how to negotiate or communicate it. Just more broadly, they struggle, a lot of them struggle with anxiety, social anxiety, and so that makes it even more difficult to express your needs and to feel comfortable being close to somebody. So I think that could be part of it as well.
Is a lot of it also the Instagramification of everything in that if you're just watching porn or you're just watching all these models and everything that virtually none of us look like them and they're probably airbrushed and filtered and everything else. But even the ones that aren't, you know, they can work out all day and make all this money and tan all day and everything else and then the average person just sees that and then sees themselves and then they don't even see themselves as an object of sexuality or something like that, right?
Right, like they will feel desexualized or feel unsexy and then also people tend to lose interest in their own sexual partners. There was one study that I cited in Sexinction showing that one in ten men lose interest in having sex with their partner after looking at social media influencers and one in ten women lose interest in having sex after being on social media because they feel worse about their bodies essentially. So even if you have a regular partner, people are still not interested in having sex with their actual partner, which is crazy.
Is the conditioning that you're talking about and the amount of porn that people are intaking and all this stuff, is it... I assume it's more for men, right? Or do you know the numbers on that, how that breaks down?
It's hard to know for Gen Z just because this is such a new phenomenon. And actually, let me think. There's one study that showed historically boys tend to watch porn, they start watching porn at a younger age and they tend to watch it more frequently. And in the past, girls would watch it once or twice because they're curious to see what it is, but they don't like it and they don't tend to watch it or experiment with it until they're older. But nowadays, because of smartphones, and I think because kids see it, right, but they have no idea, they're not meaning to look for it. They just happen, either they're playing a video game and they see it or someone sends it to them or a stranger, even worse, a stranger sends it to them on social media and so they don't know what it is and they think that's what sex is. And so my sense is both sexes are probably watching it by their own choice at a younger age and more frequently, including the girls. But we need more objective research to really know. There have been studies showing early sexualization is occurring in children. So kids are more likely to commit child-on-child sex crimes after being exposed to porn, which is really horrific. So I don't think this is a good direction. And there are some so-called experts who say that they think it's benign and that's not a big deal that kids are being exposed to porn at eight years old. I just don't believe that. I don't think anything positive is coming from that. And what happens is, so when these kids see this, they're either horrified and they say, "This is what I'm supposed to do." Because a lot of pornography today, you know, I have had pushback with some people saying like, "Not all porn is violent and degrading." Not all of it, but I think if you're a child especially, you don't know what you're looking at, you see one thing and you click on it, you're going to be bombarded with more of that. And so kids think that that is what's normal and that's what they're supposed to do, which is why we see violent sexual acts becoming more popular, especially among Gen Z, things like choking. And I think also why many young women are saying, "This is not for me. I don't really want to be degraded or spat on or called names or beaten during sex." And some guys are saying, "Well, I don't want to do that to my female partners."
Right. So that strikes me as something, and I've heard this from people, people that I know that are like in the dating world, that like everybody that's younger, they see the craziest stuff online. Then they go on dates. They start hooking up. Both sides are kind of expecting the craziest stuff to happen because that's what they've been conditioned to. Doesn't necessarily mean either one of them likes it. And then they don't even know how to basically have old-school sex, normal sex, whatever.
Thank you for saying that because so many people...
Yeah. So many people have been upset with me and saying like, "No, no, no, this is what they want." Because I think it's just miscommunication. I think both the man and the woman go into it thinking this is what they want, so I'm going to pretend I like it even though I don't want to do it. And I do think porn is the reason for that. It doesn't make sense why women would want to be choked. I mean, you can die. There are cases of it being fatal where someone is, you know, either they don't know their own strength, it's accidental, or maybe they are an abusive person. It's just not something that you should be messing around with. And it doesn't make sense. It's not healthy to me. That's not healthy sexuality. If you want to choke your partner or physically hurt your partner during sex, or if you want to be choked or physically hurt during sex...
What do you think the... what would be the normal rates if we were looking at, say, an eighteen-year-old, a twenty-five, thirty, forty, etc.? What would be the normal rates of sex that people should be having roughly?
Definitely, say, like late teens, early twenties is the peak for men. In terms of married couples, we'll say, because married couples actually tend to have more frequent sex than single people. So the average is usually once a week, which is actually not that common. I think most people think people are having sex like ten times a week, but it's, you know, most people more than once a week is not actually associated with more satisfaction in a relationship. I think it depends on the individual person and everyone's needs are different. Of course, some people might want more sex more often or less often. But my issue, and also I'd say more largely with the book, my issue is for people who are not happy in their situation because I do talk about things like, you know, if you want to get married, if you want to have kids, people don't have to do those things, but if they want to, my concern is for those who can't achieve what they want. So same with sex. If you're happy not having sex, then that's totally fine. But I think most people do want to have a long-term companion at least and to be in love and to have some form of physical intimacy. And so what I find interesting in the culture is you see so many people on both sides saying, "I'm done with dating. I don't care. You know, you're better off just being on your own." And I don't really believe that they actually mean that. I think they're just so frustrated. So I wrote Sexinction to really speak to everyone regardless of whether you're married or single or dating or in a relationship or you've given up, if you are a parent or not a parent. Especially, I think, for protecting kids, it's really important that parents know what is on the horizon in terms of technology and how this can potentially affect a child's sexual development because we saw what happened with social media and screens and smartphones. And I don't blame parents for that because we didn't know at the time how powerful this technology was going to be and how it was going to potentially replace in-person communication and the effects it has had on the younger generation, especially when there's studies now coming out showing that brain development is actually different in children and it's associated with more screen time, which is very concerning because their brains may not go back to normal, right? We don't know that.
Right. So how much of this do you think is just sort of the short-term thinking of being young, meaning let's say you're in your twenties and like you can just get off watching whatever you want to watch online. Well, in your twenties, that might be just enough, and then you're hanging out with your friends and playing video games or doing whatever you do, but it's like kind of enough. But that's not going to work in your thirties and forties because then your brain starts changing and your life starts changing and then you realize there's other things. So like there's this weird... you can just get all that you want for a certain amount of time, but obviously that's not going to work forever.
Well, I agree with you, but I think there's this trend of younger men not doing as well, you know, in society. As I mentioned in the book, young men are falling behind their female peers in terms of education and occupation. And I think part of that is due to the educational system being biased in favor of girls and young women, and that there tend to be... I just actually wrote a column for the Globe and Mail talking about how there is this bias in terms of what's considered acceptable to talk about with regard to supporting men versus women. I was writing about it in the context of online radicalization, but what I'm getting at is just this idea that I obviously don't think women are only successful because of diversity mandates or things like that. But I do sense that young men are a little bit more disillusioned and feeling nihilistic because they see how their female peers are getting in some ways preferential treatment in the education system, say, and that has long-lasting effects in terms of demoralizing an entire class of people. But then also in terms of the dating pool, you know, women tend to be hypergamous. They want to marry someone who is at the same level of success or more successful than they are. So there's a shortage of viable men. And then these young men say, "Well, why am I even going to try if the cards are stacked against me? So I'll just play my video games and vape and online gamble and at least I'm having fun right now."
Does any of this stuff break down differently based on sexuality? Because obviously you can see the difference between men and women per se in this ecosystem, but what about, you know, if it's two women or it's two men?
