Young people are having less sex. It's true. We are in the midst of a sex recession. Numerous studies show couples are getting it on less while high school students are staying virgins for longer.

With each study, a host of social evils gets brushed off and one or the other blamed for the emerging international loss of libido. The list includes stress, rates of anxiety, antidepressants, stagnating wages and economic pressures, dating apps, digital distractions like social media and Netflix, sleep deprivation, obesity, vibrators, and, of course, good ol' porn.

Experts studying this decade-long decline say they're "staggered at how little sex Americans are having - including the Millenials."

"Several factors are likely to explain the declines, but one may be the sheer pace of modern life," a British study that came out this week noted.

It found the decline in sexual frequency coincided with two events - the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and the global recession of 2008.

The increasing use of social media has resulted in increasing experience of 'virtual' as opposed to real-world sexual encounters.

If that's true - if people are choosing to stay in rather than go out - the question then becomes: What is the process of making this decision?

How do we assess the higher risk (and high return) possibility of getting some action versus the lower risk comfort of going to bed and hitting next episode?

The sex recession stats

In Australia, a comprehensive 2014 study found people in heterosexual relationships have sex an average of 1.4 times per week, down from 1.8 times a week when the study was last conducted in 2003.

In December last year, a US national survey found the percentage of high-school students who'd had intercourse dropped from 54 to 40 per cent from 1991 to 2017.

As The Atlantic pointed out, "in the space of a generation, sex has gone from something most high-school students have experienced to something most haven't. (And no, they aren't having oral sex instead - that rate hasn't changed much.)"

People now in their early 20s are two and a half times as likely to be abstinent as Gen Xers were at that age.

In March, the Washington Post analysed data from the University of Chicago's General Social Survey and found 2018 was the most sexless year to date.

More men between the ages of 18 and 30 are not having sex than ever before.

And finally, this week a British survey came out showing couples were not as sexually active as they were a decade ago (couples in general; not the same couples, FYI).

Staying home has gotten heaps better

Allison Schrager has spent her career examining how people manage risk in their lives and careers.

She's the founder of a New York risk advisory firm and author of An Economist Walks into a Brothel, which applies Wall Street-style risk assessment to everyday decisions and occupations.

"People feel overwhelmed with risk," she told Hack.

"For example, they make really good risk decision in one area of life but feel totally paralysed when it comes to superannuation."

We're making risk decisions constantly - our processing units are humming in the background; for example, when you decide whether to bike into work, you're judging the risk of getting hit by a car versus the benefit of exercise and a shorter commute.

The same applies to going out, Allison said.

"Apps like Tinder make it so much easier to date and so much easier to meet people than has ever been the case but for some reason people date less," she said.

"It's a legitimate concern of research in America about how a lot of young men don't bother getting jobs or leaving the basement because they really enjoy video games."

Why risk the real world when you can have such a compelling inner world?

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This has always been the case; a house party or a date with a near-stranger is never a sure thing. Allison's thesis is that the quality of TV and other digital entertainment has improved so much that it's significantly changed the risk equation.

In short, staying home has gotten heaps better.

"I used to be bored all the time if I was home and now I'm never bored if I'm at home ever," she said.

"Getting into a relationship is risky - there's the risk of heartbreak - whereas good entertainment in the short run can feel just as good.

"But in the long-term it may be contributing to why people feel so lonely."

... and will keep getting better

A recent article in The Baffler coined the term 'the supersenorium' for this modern arcade of personal entertainment delivered to the home: video games, movies, TV shows, virtual reality, books, and comics, all prepackaged for our consumption.

As it points out, Netflix has amassed 130 million subscribers since 2008, and it's stock has performed better than Amazon and Google combined.

"In that time, too, Netflix has accumulated over 130 million subscribers, and with their data collection begun a massive production mill, one optimized by continuous A/B testing of viewer preferences and behavior, including tracking technologies that register where viewers press pause and when they let episodes run late into the night," the author, neuroscience researcher Erik Hoel, writes.

"All of this in an effort to supplant what CEO Reed Hastings has openly identified as Netflix's number one competition: sleep."

If sleep is Netflix's main rival, then sex must be up there too.

As viewer research improves and the supersensorium becomes more immersive, there's a good chance the sex recession will continue to deepen.

As Allison points out, the cost of all this staying-home is often personal development.

"People enjoy risk - there's a rush," Allison said.

"Risk-free feels good in the short-term but ultimately it's never as satisfying."