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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. And before we get started, I want to give a heads up that today's show includes frank discussion about sex and sexuality.

A few years ago, I chaperoned my daughter's seventh grade dance.

The gym lights were dim, the pop songs were on rotation, with adults like me lurking on the sidelines.

Thinking back to that time period, what struck me wasn't what

happened, but what didn't. There was no dancing, no flirting. Boys were on one side of the gym,

girls on the other, and some were even hunched over their phones, more interested in what was

online than each other. At the time, I chalked it up to middle school awkwardness. But now, more than a

decade later, those same kids are young adults, part of Gen Z. And what I witnessed that night

might have been more than just adolescent nerves. As my guest today, journalist and author

Carter Sherman writes, it was possibly a preview of something much bigger. In her new book,

The Second Coming, Sex and the Next Generations Fight Over Its Future, Sherman explores why Gen Z,

that's people ages 13 to 28, are having less sex than previous generations. And the sex they

are having, it's often fraught with confusion, a fixation on

performance from exposure to porn, shame and disconnection. Sherman conducted more than a hundred

interviews with teenagers, young adults, and experts for the book, and makes the argument that

the decline of interest in sex and romance is a fallout for

miseducation, digital overexposure, and the politicized landscape where even desire is up for

debate.

Carter Sherman is a reproductive health and justice reporter at The Guardian, where she's

covered the real-world results of abortion bans, access to health care for trans people,

and how technology is reshaping our view of our bodies and our choices.

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