For young people, sex is changing. At least, the attitudes, expectations, and habits surrounding it are. But why? In a country where the reversal of Roe v. Wade and an increasingly conservative sociopolitical climate has altered the cultural landscape surrounding sexual and reproductive health, young people are situated at the forefront of a new era.
In a trend that The Atlantic in 2018 called the “sex recession,” young people are having less sex than ever. Between 2013 and 2023, the percentage of high school students who say they’ve had sex fell from 47% to 32%. In 2025, 48% of adult Gen Z survey respondents said they were virgins. This trend isn’t particularly new, and it isn’t isolated. Factors like social media, pornography, and the COVID pandemic have all been cited in the effort to explain this phenomena.
But in 2022, the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade’s 50-year precedent on the constitutional right to an abortion, marked the start of an evolving reproductive reality that has infiltrated the bedroom, said Carter Sherman, a reproductive health and justice reporter at The Guardian. More than one in 10 single people under 50 say they are having less sex as a result of the Dobbs decision.
“I think sex feels really fraught for young people right now,” Sherman said. “So many people express a very high sense of anxiety around sex and what it means. … And I think that this is fueled in large part by our politics.”
Sherman will be speaking on the Why Isn’t Gen Z Having Sex? How Politics Invaded the Bedroom panel at South by Southwest on March 15. The panel was inspired by the findings of her June 2025 book, The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation’s Fight Over Its Future, which explores the sex lives of young adults in a post-Roe America.
“The question is: What does it mean to have all these political and technological changes going on at once?” Sherman asked. “Theoretically, young people are more sex saturated than ever, but at the same time, their government is moving to repress their ability to actually have sex that is queer, is unmarried, is recreational.”
Today’s teens and young adults are coming of age at a time where a high degree of political polarization runs rampant, Sherman said. Young women are the most progressive group in American history, while young men continue trending toward the right. Simultaneously, the U.S. is experiencing a rise in what Sherman calls “sexual conservatism” – a movement that increases political suppression around sex by making it difficult, “if not dangerous,” to have unmarried, non-heterosexual sex due to subpar access to reproductive care.
As an epicenter for highly restrictive, conservative policy surrounding sexual and reproductive rights, Texas cultivates an atmosphere where these sentiments thrive. In fact, Texas teens are some of the most restricted in the country when it comes to reproductive decision making, said Lucie Arvallo, executive director of Jane’s Due Process, an Austin-based abortion fund that serves minors. In addition to a total abortion ban without exception for rape or incest, Texas criminalizes abortion pills and requires parental consent for birth control, among other restrictions.
“We have this web of restrictions that work together to create an environment of fear and stigma for young people seeking information,” said Arvallo, who will speak at The Abortion Highway: Abortion Funds & Texas Abortion Toll panel on March 13.
Since the Dobbs decision, this volatile environment has sown confusion about what sexual and reproductive health care options are or are not available to young adults, Arvallo said. And in a digital era, where social media allows for a constant stream of information and the habit to increasingly turn to the internet for health education, this confusion is often exacerbated.
As the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Evvy, a precision health care company that offers individuals vaginal microbiome tests, Laine Bruzek has experienced firsthand the difficulty in breaking through the noise. Evvy, like many women’s health companies, frequently deals with ad rejections and algorithmic censorship on platforms like Meta and Google that flag for inappropriate content. But post-Roe, Bruzek said she has noticed an increase in ads rejected for content about social issues, despite simply discussing women’s health topics, like OB-GYNs.
“Our education, where we are actually talking about vaginal health, and we’re using the correct anatomical terms, or we are talking about infections … that will get blocked,” she said. “So there’s an interesting challenge of making sure that the sort of science-backed information actually can get through in a time when a lot of misinformation has no problem getting through.”
Bruzek will speak on the Say Vagina: Platform Censorship, Algorithms, and the Cost to Women’s Health panel on March 18.
As young people navigate this changing climate surrounding sexual and reproductive health, they play a crucial role in shaping its future, said Christina Chang, executive director of the Reproductive Freedom Alliance, who will be speaking at The Real Fight Is Local: Repro Freedom State by State panel on March 13.
“We need their energy. We need their organization, and we need their votes to be able to point out the vision for the world that they want to live in,” Chang said. “They have the power to do that.”
While this “sex recession” is influenced by a variety of accompanying cultural and technological factors, politics play no small part in cultivating it, Sherman said.
“I do think it’s really important for people to understand that what happens in state legislatures, what happens in courtrooms, what happens in Congress, what happens in the White House – that can have [an impact] on what happens in your bedroom,” Sherman said. “Sex is not something that just occurs between two people in private. It is something that is shaped by societal forces around that bedroom.”
The Real Fight Is Local: Repro Freedom State by State
Culture track
Friday 13, 2:30pm, Hilton Austin Downtown, Salon E
The Abortion Highway: Abortion Funds & Texas Abortion Toll
Culture track
Friday 13, 4pm, Hilton Austin Downtown, Salon E
Why Isn’t Gen Z Having Sex? How Politics Invaded the Bedroom
culture track
Sunday 15, 11:30am, Hilton Austin Downtown, Salon D
Say Vagina: Platform Censorship, Algorithms, and the Cost to Women’s Health
culture track
Wednesday 18, 11:30am, Hilton Austin Downtown, Salon E
This article appears in SXSW 2026 Festival Guide.