Introducing the 2026 Playboy Gen Z Sex Survey

We asked 2,373 young Americans ages 18-29 about sex, dating and desire—here's what they said.

Introducing the Playboy 2026 Gen Z Sex Survey, in partnership with Julie and the Kinsey Institute. Is the sex recession real? We certainly think so—but we wanted proof. So, we surveyed 2373 U.S. adults ages 18-29 about their personal lives. For the full report (and to see how you stack up amid the data), go to sexsurvey.playboy.com.

Photography by Ed Templeton

We are in the midst of an era of sexual polarity. Everything is horny but no one is fucking. Everything is sexual but nothing is sexy. We have unlimited porn and profiles of allegedly available people to swipe through, and yet forming real intimacy feels like an impossibility. Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.

You’ve heard it already: this is a sex recession. Nobody, the story goes, is having much sex, whether they want to or not. More alarming, young adults—the ones we expect to be the horniest and with the most abundant access to sex—are experiencing the decline in sex worst of all.

But is any of that even true? Have we truly turned away from one of humanity’s most persistent pleasures? We needed to know for sure.

Playboy has, of course, always been curious about the specifics of contemporary sexual life. In 1983, we began surveying the public on the ins and outs of their intimate world: how often people were having sex, how often they were satisfied by it, how these figures differed between those single and married, straight or gay, man or woman. In that tradition, we partnered with the Kinsey Institute—whose sex surveys inspired Playboy’s own from the start—and emergency contraception company Julie to get a sense of our current sexual reality beyond the scope of our readership.

When the survey was first launched, there were two requirements: that respondents be readers of Playboy, and that they be interested in sex. Now, with our latest survey, we depart from those requirements for the first time.

In 1983, the question of whether a respondent had ever had sex was not even worth asking. We did ask, however, when they first had sex: 96 percent of men and 98 percent of women reported losing their virginity by the age of 25.

Sex, in this era, was a given (or at least among Playboy readers). It was assumed that everyone wanted it, whether they were in a position to express that desire or not. And people were indeed having a good deal of it: only around 10 percent of male respondents said they have sex less than once a month, the lowest frequency surveyed. Half of men reported having sex between 2-3 times a week and daily. Today’s survey suggests a complete shift in the sexual landscape: one in five respondents ages 18-29 have never had sex, a figure you will likely hear us repeat in perpetuity.

The results of our survey suggest a generation divided at several points: a fifth never having had sex, a fifth having ten or more partners. 36 percent of all respondents said they haven’t masturbated in the last three months, while 30 percent of young men masturbate nearly every day and 34 percent report that porn completely satisfies their sexual desires. Anxiety pervades, including about sexual health and reproductive rights, and yet one in six never uses any form of protection during intercourse. Above all, there is a rift in what they think they want: despite 74 percent saying they have moderate to high sexual desire, 42 percent say sex is not a priority for them right now.

But there is a surprising amount of unity to be found in the survey, too. While there are gendered splits on topics like masturbation, men and women answered the survey with striking similarity. While men are slightly more likely to have had zero partners, the number of men and women who have had two lifetime partners is exactly equal: 11.8 percent. They are aligned near perfectly on topics like the barriers singles face in meeting partners, the exhaustion of dating apps and the fear of rejection. Neither gender is measurably more likely to be dissatisfied with their life, sexually or otherwise.

The original Playboy sex survey found the same thing: men and women ultimately want and pursue similar things, despite the narratives that say otherwise. And now the 2026 survey asserts a new yet similar reality: young people do still have a desire for sex, despite the conflicting narratives there, too.

With this study, though, we have a deeper sense of what exactly is in the way: money, privacy, anxiety and a deep sense of uncertainty. Sexual mores have changed since 1983, and so have the material conditions that young people are expected to manage as they enter adulthood. But what has carried on for the last 40+ years is the conviction that sex can and should still be a cultural priority. It remains something to be curious about, something to strive to understand. Even if we’re not all having it.

For the full report, go to sexsurvey.playboy.com.