Image Magazine

Relax. It turns out we’re having the ‘right’ amount of sex

Kate Demolder conducted a rudimentary examination among friends and acquaintances – single and committed – to decipher how much sex they were having. Those in relationships, unsurprisingly, logged on more hours, but every person she spoke with believed they ‘should be having more’ sex.

In a piece for the Atlantic in 2019, writer Kate Julian introduced a Western audience to the idea of a sex recession. It contradicted a number of things we’ve come to know; taboos have been lifted, but people aren’t talking about sex, hook up culture is rampant, but people aren’t engaging. Julian’s essay drew from a selection of recent academic papers, with two articles by psychologist Jean Twenge especially relevant. Twenge and her colleagues showed...