The Sex Recession: Why More Men Are Choosing Solitude Over Relationships in 2026
"Weekly sex among U.S. adults has dropped from 55% to 37% since 1990. Young men are opting out of relationships at record rates. Here's what the data actually says."
SEXUAL HEALTH AND AWARENESS
Something significant is happening to male sexuality in America — and most people aren’t talking about it plainly.
Weekly sexual activity among U.S. adults aged 18 to 64 fell from 55 percent in 1990 to 37 percent in 2024, according to 2024 General Social Survey data analyzed by the Institute for Family Studies. [1] That’s not a blip. That’s a generational shift in how Americans relate to each other — and the decline is steepest among the youngest adults.
Researchers have a name for it: the sex recession. And while it affects both men and women, the data tells a distinctly male story.
The Numbers Behind the Trend
About half of men below 30 — 51 percent — are currently single, according to Pew Research Center data. [2] In 2018 to 2022 waves of the General Social Survey, approximately 28 to 30 percent of young men reported no sex in the past year, compared to 10 to 15 percent of women in the same age group. [3] That gap — nearly three times as many young men going without sex as young women — has been widening, not narrowing.
Men experienced a greater decline in sexual activity than women across the measured period — down 7 percent versus 3 percent for women. [3] And voluntary disengagement from relationships appears 2.5 to 3 times higher in men than women, even when accounting for motivation. [4]
Nearly 1 in 5 adults — 19 percent — have now engaged with AI systems designed to simulate romantic partners. Among young adults aged 18 to 30, 31 percent of men and 23 percent of women report AI romantic partner interactions. [5]
These numbers don’t exist in isolation. They tell a story about a generation of men recalibrating their relationship with intimacy, connection, and what it costs them to pursue either.
Why Men Are Opting Out
The reasons are layered and don’t reduce to a single cause. Researchers and sociologists point to several converging factors.
The most significant driver, according to the Institute for Family Studies, is not cultural resentment or ideology — it is simply the increasing delay of marriage. The share of men aged 22 to 35 who have never been married is higher today than at any point since data collection began in 1880. Unmarried people have less sex in general. When more men are unmarried, more men are sexless — even if the rate of sex within relationships hasn’t changed. [6]
Young adults aged 18 to 29 living with partners dropped from 42 percent to 32 percent between 2014 and 2024. Average weekly social time fell from 12.8 hours in 2010 to 6.5 hours in 2019, then to just over 5 hours by 2024. [1] Less cohabitation and less face-to-face social time means fewer organic opportunities for relationships to develop.
Men also experience significantly lower match rates on traditional dating apps — approximately 1 match per 40 likes on Tinder for the average man, compared to considerably higher rates for women. The asymmetry of digital dating creates frustration that compounds over time and for some men, calcifies into withdrawal. [5]
Men were more likely to remain sexless in areas with skewed sex ratios — places where women were fewer relative to men — and in regions marked by stark income inequality. [7] Economic precarity and geographic mismatch are structural contributors that don’t get enough attention in the cultural conversation.
And then there is disillusionment. A growing number of men describe opting out not because they can’t find partners but because they’ve concluded the cost-benefit calculation doesn’t work in their favor — emotionally, financially, or practically. Whether that conclusion is accurate is a separate question from whether it is genuinely held. The data suggests it is genuinely held by a meaningful and growing proportion of young men.
Masturbation — What the Research Actually Shows
As partnered sex declines, solo sexual activity has moved in a different direction.
A statistically significant increase in masturbation prevalence was documented between 1999 to 2001 and 2010 to 2012 — from 37 percent to 40.3 percent in women and from 73.4 percent to 77.5 percent in men, according to British national surveys of sexual attitudes and lifestyles. [8] The increase in recent masturbation was most pronounced among the youngest men, those aged 16 to 24. The increase was significant for both men and women who had casual or steady partners — meaning the rise isn’t simply explained by more people being single.
Ninety-two percent of American men masturbate, according to TENGA’s global self-pleasure survey — though Americans tend to underestimate this figure, typically guessing around 83 percent. [9]
The relationship between masturbation and partnered sex is more nuanced than the substitution model most people assume. Both men and women who had sexual difficulties in their relationships also tended to report engaging in more solo masturbation — suggesting that when partnered sex becomes complicated, solo sexual activity often increases as a compensatory response. [10]
For men specifically, being happy in their relationship was linked to a lower probability of reporting recent masturbation. The inverse is also true: men who are unhappy, unsatisfied, or disengaged from their relationships show higher rates of solo sexual activity as a replacement rather than a complement. [8]
The broader cultural shifts driving this pattern include increased access to online sexual content — a factor the researchers themselves identify as a likely contributor to changing patterns of sexual behavior between survey periods. Pornography consumption among men is at historically high levels, and researchers increasingly point to its role in substituting for partnered intimacy rather than supplementing it for a subset of users.
The AI Companion Dimension
The fastest-growing alternative to human intimacy isn’t pornography. It’s AI.
The AI companion market reached $24.09 billion in 2026, growing at 31 percent annually. As of February 2026, AI companion platforms collectively hit 50 million active users globally, with 10 million new downloads in January 2026 alone. [11] MIT Technology Review named AI companions one of its 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2026.
The demographic driving this market is the same demographic driving the sex recession: young men. The user base at one major AI companion platform is 81 percent male with an average age of 27.4 years. Broader market surveys put the male share across the category at 62 percent. [12]
What AI companions offer that human relationships don’t is availability without rejection, emotional responsiveness without negotiation, and intimacy without the vulnerability of being genuinely known by another person. For men who have already decided the cost of pursuing human connection is too high, AI companions offer a functional alternative — one that the data suggests is increasingly being accepted as such.
What the Research Doesn’t Say
This article covers a real and documented trend. It does not cover the full picture.
The majority of men — including the majority of young men — are still pursuing human relationships. The trend toward withdrawal and solo substitution is significant and growing, but it is not yet the norm. Most men who reported no sex in the past year are not making an ideological statement. They are navigating the same structural changes — delayed marriage, reduced social time, asymmetric dating markets, economic precarity — that everyone is navigating, with fewer resources to do so.
The research also consistently finds that men who are in happy relationships have lower rates of solo sexual substitution. Relationship satisfaction is the strongest protective factor against withdrawal — which suggests that the sex recession is less a story about men rejecting intimacy and more a story about the structural and emotional barriers to finding it becoming, for a meaningful number of men, too high to clear.
A Clinical Note
If you are a man who has noticed a significant decline in desire for partnered sex, increased reliance on pornography or solo sexual activity as a replacement rather than a supplement, or a growing preference for AI companionship over human connection — these patterns are worth examining with a healthcare provider or therapist who specializes in sexual health. None of these patterns are moral failures. They are documented responses to documented pressures. They are also, in their more entrenched forms, associated with reduced wellbeing, increased isolation, and reduced life satisfaction over time. The research on this is consistent: human connection remains one of the strongest predictors of long-term health and happiness. Substitutes, however sophisticated, have not yet been shown to replicate its effects.
Sources
— [1] Institute for Family Studies. Adults Are Having Less Sex Than Ever, with Gen Z Seeing the Steepest Decline. Based on 2024 General Social Survey data. ifstudies.org. September 2025.
— [2] FODMAP Everyday / Pew Research Center. Men Say They’re Opting Out of Relationships. fodmapeveryday.com. March 2026.
— [3] Gynocentrism.com. Who Is Voluntarily Opting Out of Sex and Relationships? gynocentrism.com. August 2025. Citing General Social Survey 2018–2022 wave data; Wilcox, W. Bradford & Stone, Lyman. The Rise of the Sexless Young American Male. Institute for Family Studies. 2023.
— [4] Gynocentrism.com. Who Is Voluntarily Opting Out of Sex and Relationships — voluntary disengagement data. gynocentrism.com. August 2025.
— [5] AllAboutAI.com. AI Dating Statistics 2026. allaboutai.com. October 2025. Citing PR Newswire February 2025 and Match Singles in America Study 2025.
— [6] Institute for Family Studies / Lyman Stone. Male Sexlessness Is Rising But Not for the Reasons Incels Claim. ifstudies.org. 2018. Updated in context of 2024 GSS data.
— [7] Psychiatrist.com. Investigating the Forces Behind Celibacy. psychiatrist.com. September 2025.
— [8] Fischer, N., Kozák, M., Graham, C.A., Clifton, S., Mercer, C.H., & Mitchell, K.R. (2025). Trends in Masturbation Prevalence and Associated Factors: Findings from the British National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles. The Journal of Sex Research. doi: 10.1080/00224499.2025.2555053.
— [9] TENGA Co. Ltd. 2018 Global Self-Pleasure Report. prnewswire.com. April 2018. 13,000 respondents across 18 countries.
— [10] Lehmiller, J.J. / Psychology Today. Is Masturbation Replacing Sex in Relationships? psychologytoday.com. January 2026. Citing Fischer et al. 2025.
— [11] CompanionRater. AI Companion Statistics 2026. companionrater.com. June 2026. Citing TechCrunch / Appfigures data and MIT Technology Review 2026 Breakthrough Technologies list.
— [12] AIGirlfriends.ai. AI Girlfriend Statistics 2026. aigirlfriends.ai. May 2026.