Gen Z, as is well known, is having significantly less sex than their parents. They also drink less, smoke less, and have fewer close friends. The rise of the internet is often blamed for this development – the anxious generation is having less sex because they are porn-addled and distracted. But a new report shows that, alone in the West, the Danes are bucking the trend. Young Danes between 15–25 are not having less sex than previous generations; in fact, the rate has remained more or less constant since the 1970s. Most people report satisfaction with their sex lives. In Denmark, the sexless Zoomer has been proven a myth.
The Danish example suggests that we should rethink the sexlessness crisis elsewhere. It sounds plausible that our endless scrolling and unlimited access to online pornography would affect our sex and social lives – very few young people are proud of their online habits. But the Danes are no less addicted to the internet than their European counterparts – an age limit on TikTok is one of the Prime Minister’s top priorities. More than one third of young Danish men report porn as one of their primary sources of information about sex. And yet, they are still able to woo the opposite sex, and presumably perform on the occasion. Perhaps the internet is too easy a scapegoat.
In Britain, 18 per cent of those aged between 24 and 35 still live with their parents; among men, it is 23 per cent. In Denmark, only 11 per cent still live at home at the age of 24 – and while there has been an increase in 18–21-year-olds living at home, the overwhelming majority of those in their later twenties have moved out. Danes leave university with little to no debt, and reasonable career prospects. Britain’s sexlessness crisis may therefore have a solution, if more difficult than banning porn and limiting internet use (it’s the economy, stupid). Of course it is less appealing to go on a date if you would rather not talk about work or, worse, your date has to meet your mother before you can get her into bed.
Some conservatives might welcome young people’s abandonment of casual sex and alcohol as a sign of their growing responsibility and maturity. But what really seems to be happening is much more depressing: young people are just doing less. We are a generation known for ‘quiet quitting’, calling in sick, and scrolling. It is increasingly prohibitively expensive to be young, and getting rid of the screens will not fill the gaping hole in youth socialising. In Britain, where pubs close at 11pm and pints edge ever closer to the £8 threshold, the screen starts to seem more appealing. There is nothing in this to celebrate, and it is the consequence of entirely reversible government policy.
The happy young Danes, meanwhile, have the highest rates of alcohol consumption in Europe; needless to say, there is a strong correlation between those who drink and those who shag. There is much to learn from a country so like Britain in many ways, but that manages to drink more than any other European nation, without losing its reputation for being skinny, beautiful and happy in the process.
This thesis is also supported by disparities within Danish society, where a significant correlation was found between satisfaction in life and satisfaction in sex. Another report from the wellbeing commission showed that young Danes are also doing better than their European counterparts on that front. There is no general wellbeing crisis among young Danes. Unsurprisingly, mental health problems were more prevalent among lower socio-economic groups. General proclamations about the ‘anxious generation’ cover up more blindingly obvious reasons for bad mental health outcomes. Young people do better – and have more sex – under conditions where they can succeed.
The lesson from Denmark is that getting people shagging again will require something different from age limits on porn and mental health support. Young people will find a way to have sex in spite of those modern distractions if they do not live with their parents, their careers are progressing, and they feel their lives are going in the right direction. The human sex drive will triumph over the algorithm under the right conditions; instead of focusing on regulating the internet, governments should focus on improving the alternatives. But this is of course a taller order.
Like their British counterparts, young Danes are facing an increasingly forbidding housing market and rising cost of living, but the rental market is better. A beer is still expensive, but at least you can bring a girl and a six-pack back to your apartment. The young Danes are drinking and having sex, in short, because they are more self-confident and have less to worry about. Who cares if your screen time is above what you would want it to be? Social media cannot be blamed for Britain’s sexless Zoomers: it is the consequence of the entirely unsexy circumstances that keep them from growing up.
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