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Despite things that should conceivably cause an increase in sexual activity — things like better access to birth control and loosening cultural views on sex — a new study published Tuesday found that American adults are actually having less sex than they were 25 years ago.

Published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the paper used data from the General Social Survey — a nationally representative survey of Americans over 18 collected most years between 1972 and 2014. Researchers found a drop in sexual activity across gender, race, marital status, and age. Although increased sexual frequency has long been considered an incentive for getting married, the biggest drop in sexual activity was actually among married couples themselves.

Back in the early 1990s, the average American had sex about 60 to 62 times per year, but that number dropped to less than 53 times per year by 2014. Among married couples specifically, the drop was even more dramatic — from about 73 times per year in 1990 to 55 in 2014. This actually brings the sex lives married couples below people who've never been married, who have sex about 59 times per year as of 2014.

While all these drops in sexual activity have been happening, Americans have also been coupling up less. According to the study, 66 percent of American adults were living with a romantic partner in 1986, but by 2014, only 59 percent were doing the same.

The study couldn't definitively answer the question of why are people having so much less sex, but listed a few possibilities. Americans now have more "pleasurable options" at their disposal, like Netflix and cruising Facebook. Pornography consumption has increased — since watching porn is a typically a "solitary activity," the "frequency of intercourse is negatively correlated" with the frequency of porn watching. Researchers also cited a decline in happiness among people over 30, a higher incidence of depression, and sexual dysfunction caused by anti-depressants as possible reasons why people are having less sex now than 25 years ago.

"Are they less happy and thus having less sex or are they having less sex and therefore less happy? It’s probably some of both," Jean Twenge, the study's lead author, told the Washington Post. "We do know that sexual frequency is linked to marital satisfaction, so overall if you have fewer people having sex you could have people who are less happy and less satisfied with that relationship."

The study also found that, when you compare people born in the 1930s to Millennials born in the 1990s at the same life stages, Millennials are having less sex than those born in the '30s were at the same age. In fact, those having the least sex for their age group are Millennials.



This isn't the first time it's been reported that Millennials are less sex-oriented than previous generations. In August 2016, another study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found the same thing to be true, and that claim was then corroborated by a Washington Post investigation into the sex lives of Millennials.

The Washington Post investigation seemed to find that work was a recurring theme among Millennials explaining why they weren't as horny as their parents and grandparents were at their age. "It's not like I'm saving myself for anything," then 19-year-old Alexandra Wolff said. "It's more like I've been busy."

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Hannah Smothers Hannah writes about health, sex, and relationships for Cosmopolitan, and you can follow her on Twitter and Instagram

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