It’s hard to keep up with the whole sex thing. One minute we are being told that dating apps have unleashed an epidemic of casual sex and millennials are hooking up willy-nilly. The next minute we are being told that technology has propelled us into a global sex recession – none of us can turn our screens off, so no one is getting it on. There seems to be a new article about the “decline of sex” every few days; the latest was courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, which recently argued that we are too busy binge-watching Netflix to bother bonking.

This isn’t just kinky conjecture: the Journal has the stats to prove it. According to a poll commissioned by the paper, one in four adults in relationships have turned down sex with their partner in favour of streaming TV. Younger generations are more likely to eschew intimacy for entertainment – 36% of 18- to 38-year-olds said they had chosen streaming services over sex, compared with 16% of people over 39. Netflix and chill, it seems, has gone from being a spicy euphemism to a mundane descriptor.

It was impossible to read the front-page story without wondering if it was supposed to be satire. For example, it quoted a 36-year-old who “runs an online business making stationery”; apparently, she and her husband haven’t had a third child yet because “there’s always a new episode of Schitt’s Creek” online. Then there’s the part where the Journal seeks to prove that streaming-not-sexing is a global phenomenon by recounting the experience of a couple based in Singapore. Over Christmas, the pair “were watching Black Earth Rising, a war-crime drama on Netflix, when he began dropping hints. She demurred and kept watching.” Truly unbelievable that a show about the Rwandan genocide wouldn’t put you in the mood for love – it must be indicative of a larger phenomenon.

Who wants to talk about serious systemic issues when you can write patronising articles about millennials?

By far the weirdest part about the piece, however, was the way it conflated sex with procreating. From what I have heard from heterosexual friends, many straight people have sex while explicitly trying not to have babies. Yet the entire thrust of the Journal article was that streaming has killed sex, which has in turn led to falling fertility rates.

This is a bonkers thing to suggest. You don’t have to be a genius, or even a subscriber to the Journal, to realise that birth rates aren’t falling because of Netflix – it’s the economy, stupid. Having kids is expensive (particularly in the US, which is the most expensive place in the world to have a baby) and millennials are poor. Younger generations are also increasingly worried about bringing kids into a world teetering on the verge of a climate change catastrophe.

But who wants to talk about serious systemic issues when you can write patronising articles saying millennials are too lazy to procreate, eh? The Journal’s piece is just the latest instalment of an enduring trend of fertility shaming. It’s anyone’s guess what they are going to blame declining birth rates on next, but you can practically guarantee that a new episode of sneering at millennials will start in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 …