Year: 2020

Ever wanted to know how much sex people around you are *really* having? Us, too.

According to a recent U.S. study, millennials (those born between the early 1980s to mid 1990s) have fewer sexual partners and are having less sex in their 20s and 30s compared to GenXers and Baby Boomers at the same age. They’re also apparently holding onto on their virginity for longer, despite being more chill than other generations about pre-marital sex.

Apart from a generational shift toward keeping it in your pants, relationship status can affect the amount of sexy times you’re having, too. According to a recent survey by Cosmopolitan, more than 50 percent of married women in their 20s wish they were having more sex. (Respondents cited reasons like being busy, tired and stressed from work for their decreased sexual encounters.) And when it comes to partnering up, many single women today are over …

About two minutes after Dr. Ruth Westheimer walks into Refinery29’s office, she asks me to tell her about the company. Is Refinery29 a newspaper? A magazine? “It’s a website for millennial and Gen Z women women,” I tell her. “Gen what? Write that down for me.” So our interview begins with me writing down “Gen Z = ages 22 and under” in my notebook, tearing out the page, and handing it to her.

At age 91 and a half — and yes, she counts the half — Dr. Ruth is working as hard as she ever has. Next year will mark 40 years since her first radio show, Sexually Speaking, kicked off her media career as a sex educator, though her work in human sexuality began earlier. (Her first gig was as a researcher at Planned Parenthood in the 1960s.) Today, she’s promoting her latest book, the fourth edition of …

Is it just me, or does it seem like older generations love to pick apart the way we run our love lives? It’s like everything about how we date and have sex is “wrong” in their eyes — from our reliance on dating apps to meet people to our alleged affinity for hookup culture — but in reality, how Millennials have sex compared to past generations isn’t wrong… it’s just different.

“I think the sky is the limit for Millennial sex, but the anxieties are no less present,” Hannah Simpson, transgender advocate, writer, and educator & LGBTQ millennial expert, tells Bustle. “We have grown up having instant, stigma-free access to all kinds of sexual information and imagery. Nobody has to face another human being to rent adult videos. With more information, we are more picky with our partners and have higher expectations.”

Since some of us grew up with access …