What’s Behind Gen Z’s Sex Recession?
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
WIRED
4.1 • 572 Ratings
🗓️ 18 July 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In today’s episode, we look into why Gen Z is having less sex than other generations — and what it says about how we are all relating to each other. WIRED’s Zoë Schiffer is joined by writer and journalist Carter Sherman to talk about her latest book, The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation's Fight Over Its Future, which reveals how the internet, politics, and conservative legislation have shaped how Gen Z views sex.
Articles mentioned in this episode:
- How Social Media Is Fueling Gen Z’s Sex Recession | WIRED
- Thinking Machines Lab Raises a Record $2 Billion, Announces Cofounders | WIRED
Join WIRED’s best and brightest on Uncanny Valley as they dissect the collision of tech, politics, finance, and business, from Alexis Ohanian's newest tech venture to the effects of inaccurate information from artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots on social protests.
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, this is Zoe. Before we start, I want to take a chance to remind you that we really want to hear from you. |
| 0:07.0 | If you have a tech-related question that's been on your mind or a topic that you wish we'd talked about on the show, |
| 0:12.4 | you can write to us at uncanny valley at wire.com. And if you listen to and enjoy our episodes, |
| 0:18.6 | please, please rate the show and leave a review on your |
| 0:20.9 | podcast app of choice. It honestly really helps other people find us. |
| 0:29.7 | Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Wired's director of business and industry, Zoe Schiffer. |
| 0:35.7 | Today on the show, why Gen Z is having less sex than prior |
| 0:39.0 | generations and why it has a lot more to do with tech than you might think. According to a |
| 0:44.5 | 2022 survey by the Kinsey Institute in Love Honey, one in four Gen Z adults, meaning people between |
| 0:50.3 | the ages of 13 and 28 in the year of our Lord 2025, have never had partnered sex. |
| 0:56.6 | And the most recent data available from the CDC shows that only around a third of high schoolers |
| 1:01.4 | reported having sex down from 47% in 2013. There's been a lot of talk around why Gen C seems |
| 1:08.1 | less interested in sex, with the prevailing theory being that they're just |
| 1:11.7 | like a more puritanical generation. But in her new book, The Second Coming, Sex and the Next |
| 1:17.5 | Generation's Fight Over Its Future, writer and journalist Carter Sherman found that it's not |
| 1:22.1 | quite that simple. Social media, the pandemic, and conservative legislation have all |
| 1:26.9 | influenced Gen Z's current predicament. |
| 1:29.2 | To break it down, Carter Sherman joins us today on the show. |
| 1:32.0 | Carter, welcome to Uncanny Valley. |
| 1:34.1 | Thank you for having me. |
| 1:39.7 | So you open up the first chapter of your book by describing the moment that we're in as a sex |
| 1:46.0 | recession, particularly for Gen Z. What exactly is a sex recession and why does it matter? |
... |
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