Is Netflix killing sex, stopping us having babies – or neither? | Arwa Mahdawi
Another day, another claim that millennials would rather watch their screens than make love. Sorry, Wall Street Journal, I’m just not convinced
It’s hard to keep up with the whole sex thing. One minute we are being told that dating apps have unleashed an epidemic of casual sex and millennials are hooking up willy-nilly. The next minute we are being told that technology has propelled us into a global sex recession – none of us can turn our screens off, so no one is getting it on. There seems to be a new article about the “decline of sex” every few days; the latest was courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, which recently argued that we are too busy binge-watching Netflix to bother bonking.
This isn’t just kinky conjecture: the Journal has the stats to prove it. According to a poll commissioned by the paper, one in four adults in relationships have turned down sex with their partner in favour of streaming TV. Younger generations are more likely to eschew intimacy for entertainment – 36% of 18- to 38-year-olds said they had chosen streaming services over sex, compared with 16% of people over 39. Netflix and chill, it seems, has gone from being a spicy euphemism to a mundane descriptor.