Why are we having less sex?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 29 August 2019
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Porn, smart phones and the ‘slutty transmitter’. Adults in the US have sex on average about 50 times a year, which has dropped by 20 per cent over the last two decades. It’s a similar story in the UK, Australia, Germany, Finland and Japan. Could it be down to porn or our smart phones? Or is it actually down to something much harder to switch off? Some of the answers might surprise you.
Picture: A couple in bed using their phones. Credit: Getty Images
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Inquiry on the BBC World Service. I'm Ruth Alexander. Each week one question, |
| 0:06.3 | four expert witnesses and an answer. |
| 0:09.4 | I'm happily married with two children and a fulfilling job. |
| 0:17.0 | A reader writes to her newspaper agony aunt. |
| 0:20.0 | But I've realized I've gone off sex. We'd probably do it once a month now. Is it a problem? |
| 0:30.4 | It may or may not be a problem for this particular couple, but they can take comfort in the fact they're not alone. |
| 0:37.0 | In every one of the world's richer countries, where the sex lives of citizens are studied in detail, |
| 0:44.0 | researchers have discovered that people are having less sex. |
| 0:50.0 | The average adult in the United States has sex about once a week. |
| 0:57.0 | That's about a 20% drop in frequency in as many years. |
| 1:02.0 | It's a similar story in the UK, Australia, Germany, Finland and Japan. |
| 1:07.0 | At the same time, the number of people not having any sex is going up. |
| 1:12.0 | Gay or Straight. not having any sex is going up. |
| 1:13.0 | Gay or straight, young or old, they're not doing it, not much anyway. |
| 1:20.0 | So this week we want to know why are we having less sex. |
| 1:27.0 | Part one for your viewing pleasure. |
| 1:33.0 | Maybe we're still interested in sex, |
| 1:37.0 | maybe we're still interested in sex, but we're too busy watching it to do it. |
| 1:47.0 | What made you decide to think, you know, right, that's it, porn's going to be what I'm going to look at? |
| 1:52.0 | Right, so that's a quite an interesting phrase. that pawns going to be what I'm going to look at. |
| 1:53.0 | Right, so that's quite an interesting phrase there. |
| 1:56.1 | But in general, I actually came from an extremely conservative religious background and I went |
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