Is The Rent Killing Sex?

I keep running across an interesting argument by certain urbanites about sex and housing struggles, but is it true?

Viral study showing young people not having as much sex. Mediocre sample size aside, there's some directional truth to it.

Many pundits and click-bait social media websites have suggested that sexual activity among young people (usually 18 - 35) is declining because they live with their parents due to high housing costs. I’m wary of viral takes on sexual inactivity because many of the viral surveys of young people have very poor sampling integrity. It’s unbelievable that one study with a gender sampling size of 200 was published in the Washington Post. While CDC’s credible research at least confirms that teenagers are indeed having less sex, whether that can be extrapolated onto 18 to 35-year-olds is less intuitive.

Nevertheless, it’s a gold mine of content for everyone (including me) because everything is about sex, except sex itself, and you’ve got a generational shift angle. A recent video by socialist YouTuber “Philosophy Tube” presented this housing and sex intersection in her latest popular video. Echoing several humanities academics, she argues that the decline of third places for sex in American cities — prostitution, sex clubs, peep shows, and sex motels — contributes to the national sex decline. Moreover, the presence of high housing costs forces to young people to live with their parents or with roommates, making sexual activity harder to do in private.

I’ve also seen urbanists try to link suburban isolation and car dependency to teenage depression and sexual inactivity. While there are some truths to the idea that the decline of the adult industry and suburban isolation form some unique sexual and social habits, I doubt that the sexual activity of young people is influenced by their unfortunate housing predicament or adolescent suburban isolation.

Philosophy Tube made a good point that in hookup culture, having a private bedroom or home is a class signifier in contrast to not having space to have sex. While true in expensive, housing-constrained urban markets, outside of Manhattan, London, or San Francisco, most young people I know even with low incomes have private bedrooms, usually because they split a house. The very poor who live in bunk beds, couch surf, or SROs or something similar have a harder time, but this has long been the case in major cities and can’t explain the sex decline or any cultural shift.

I was living in college dorms two years ago, and I will admit that having roommates certainly made hooking up difficult. Now general etiquette was simply to inform your roommates in advance that you might be hooking up after a date. It worked well enough, but the dorms were small and I had to throw my mattress from my bunk to the floor to manage anything. I eventually just started getting hotels for hookups, but only middle-class students had the money to do that regularly while many low-income kids did not.

Having comfortable and secluded sex is a motivator for why college kids try to find off-campus private housing, but these issues aren’t new enough for college students to explain a generational shift in sex. I did go to a school that is a contender for the worst campus housing shortage in the United States, but young people living on campus have lived with roommates since forever. A very clear example of roommates not being a major determinant in sexual activity is that Japan is one of the most celibate nations for youth, yet half of Tokyo households live without room or housemates compared to much smaller percentages in Western cities.

Philosophy Tube made two other points about how cities are suppressing sexual activity that she echoed from urbanist theories. One is a new argument I hadn’t heard, which is that the decline of sex work spaces, adult bars, and porno theaters makes finding third places for sex harder. I think this is a very New York City-centric idea, as in the vast majority of U.S. cities at least, it’s not hard to find sex workers walking the streets and having sex in cars or trucks. I know where they walk in the Bay Area and numerous California cities in the Central Valley — it’s just that they’re mostly working where their blue-collar, mostly male, clientele traverses. A lot of sex work has shifted to online services, but I’m doubtful that both then and now, under-25-year-olds with little disposable income financed sexual services.

The second, and much more common claim, is that sexual activity is down because young people are staying at their parent’s house for longer periods due to housing costs. I’m certain that living with parents impacts sexual activity, but again I’m doubtful of whether it can be extrapolated to a global generational shift in sex. Part of the reason 20-somethings and even 30-somethings live with their parents is not just because of housing costs, but also life stages and convenience. It’s more of a post-World War 2, Anglo-American nuclear family tradition that young people unnecessarily leave their family unit and trek life alone at 18 years old.

With multi-generational households, you generally move out when you’re ready or when forming another household through marriage. Living with family doesn’t just benefit young people in housing cost savings, but the parents benefit if they need care. College attendance is also declining among young people. If you’re an unmarried, childless, 18 to 30-something working a job or going to the local junior college or state school down the street, there are few reasons to waste disposable income on housing.

Savings on housing costs and defying Anglo-American cultural norms are more important than hookup sex and the occasional short fling sex for a lot of young people. Also, young people know their families well and can time when their parents aren’t home. I also think this is a gender issue. Having a secluded place for sex is usually expected of young men, not women. Traditionally masculine roles are in decline everywhere in society, so young men are living at home just as it has long been acceptable for young women to do.

The real reason why young people aren’t having as much sex is three-fold: one, it’s the phones. Fifteen years ago, the big issues with teens were too much sex and unwanted pregnancy — now we’re complaining about the opposite. Parents got what they wanted. The CDC reports that teenage drinking, smoking, mortality, and sex are at record lows. Not because of abstinence-only education or religion, but because young people get their dopamine fix from mass communications and infinite digital content.

Social media use is not without consequence. Young people, especially girls, are depressed at historically high rates. CDC reports that over half of all high school girls in the U.S. have experienced depression symptoms, up from 36% to 57% in just 10 years. One-third of teen girls now seriously contemplate suicide. The culprit is clearly social media like Instagram.

To be frank, much of the “young people sex” from prior generations was date rape and sexual assault under the influence. Young people today are more educated on sex, drink less and therefore are more immune to social pressure and coercive sex. The young measure the opportunity cost of reduced physical activities like partying and sex with the high mental stimulation of scrolling behind their phones, and they are choosing their phones. Maybe hookups and getting drunk just can’t compete.

Despite media obsession with hookup culture and casual sex, it’s wildly exaggerated how much casual sex the vast majority of young people have. Most young people are not running around hooking up regularly. Frequent casual sex is done by a minority of cliques in college (about 9.7% of students, according to the National College Health Assessment) who are more inclined to write for online magazines or post on Instagram. Daily life for most college students is being sexually inactive unless they’re in a close-distance partner with whom they exclusively have sex.

The decline of early marriage and relationships is another major contributor to sex decline. Young people are in far fewer young marriages than in generations prior — a long-term trend pre-dating Generation Z — because it doesn’t serve either the social or economic benefits it once did. Relationship data is less clear because girls are more inclined to characterize their situations as a relationship than boys are. However, studies show that the upward mobility of women in higher education discourages them from getting married or engaging in frequent sex compared to generations prior.

Ain’t much else contributing to the median sexual decline of young people besides phones and fewer marriages. The discourse around this is by cosmopolitan urbanites in a few high-demand metros speculating that everyone is dealing with the same issues as them. There are some weak correlations between having better sex lives and having more money, but I'm not certain it explains the sex recession. Most places still have prostitutes and cheap hookup motels. Most young people can find places to have sex without being disturbed — even in their parent’s house.

It’s easier than ever to be a sexually active young person because dating apps provide a near-infinite amount of options for sex, and that’s why it’s down. Young people aren’t having sex because they’re choosing not to — even if they don’t realize it. As the saying goes: everything is about sex, except sex itself. Posting risque pictures, flirting via text, and engaging in parasocial communications with dozens or hundreds of people you will never see in real life is more titillating for many young people than getting drunk or hooking up.