‘Netflix And Chill’ Could Be To Blame For Declining Sex Rates
One Cambridge professor named David Spiegelhalter is blaming Netflix for the trend of declining sex rates.
The British statistician and author of Sex By Numbers hasn’t done any studies yet, but he theorizes that the sharp increase in binge-watching TV, made especially readily available by Netflix, is to blame.
“People are having less sex,” he announced at the Hay Festival in London recently. “Sexually active couples between 16 and 64 were asked and the median was five times in the last month in 1990, then four times in 2000 and three times in 2010. At this rate by 2030, couples are not going to be having any sex at all. Which is a very worrying trend.”
He went on: “The point is that there is this massive connectivity, the constant checking of our phones compared to just a few years ago when TV closed down at 10.30pm or whatever and there was nothing else to do.”
Spiegelhalter maintains that he’s generally speaking for British people, but as sex rates have also been declining in the United States, we can’t completely discount his idea either.
Dave Simpson wrote an article for Vice titled “Why Millennials Aren’t Fucking,” chronicling two relevant studies. In the first, doctors at San Diego State University found that millennials reported fewer sexual partners than those of generations before them. A study from 2015, done by the CDC, reported similar findings among girls and boys aged 15-19.
“The decline was significant in both genders, but particularly among men,” Simpson noted.
But The Cut is not mad about it, which is pretty hilarious.
“Interesting theory,” Gabriella Paiella wrote in response to Spiegelhalter, “but seeing how binge-watching an entire season of a show is basically as pleasurable as tantric sex without physical movement, interacting with another human, or the accidental-pregnancy risk — we’re going to go ahead and say that this is a net positive.”
