If someone told you in the 1990s that future teenagers would be having less sex, you might have laughed. For decades, sex was the soundtrack of youth culture, pulsing through music, movies, advertising, and teen dramas. It was a rite of passage, a status symbol, and (so we were told) a sign of liberation.
But now we’re witnessing something unexpected. According to mounting research, Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012, is less sexually active than previous generations at the same age. Some researchers have dubbed them “The Young and the Sexless.”
At first glance, this sounds like good news. Isn’t less sexual activity a win for biblical ethics? Isn’t restraint better than indulgence?
But scratch the surface, and what you’ll find isn’t moral clarity, but rather a muddled, anxious disengagement from real relationship. What looks like virtue may, in fact, be vulnerability avoidance in disguise.
Apathy, Not Purity
This isn’t a revival of biblical ethics. Gen Z’s sexual inactivity isn’t driven by conviction or covenant, but by a culture that has numbed desire and dismantled formation.
Their apathy is rooted in deeper dysfunction:
- Digital immersion: Social media, gaming, and endless streaming keep teens relationally detached and physically isolated.
- Emotional fragility: Rising anxiety, depression, and low self-worth make intimacy feel unmanageable and unsafe.
- Cultural saturation: With hardcore content only a swipe away, many feel they have “seen it all,” yet feel emptier than ever.
- Developmental disruption: COVID stripped them of formative experiences and left social muscles atrophied.
What looks like restraint may actually be retreat: retreat from risk, from relationship, from the vulnerability of being known.
This isn’t sexual virtue. It is emotional disengagement, spiritual confusion, and a relational crisis wearing the mask of self-control.
What’s Missing? A Vision for Embodied Life
This moment is not just cultural, it is deeply theological. And it offers the Church a profound opportunity, if only we’ll recognise it.
Because Gen Z doesn’t just need information or warning. They need a vision, a rich, biblical, awe-filled understanding of what it means to be human.
We must call them:
- To embodied living, not digital disembodiment
- To self-giving love, not self-protective fear
- To meaningful relationships, not curated consumption
- To discipled desire, not unformed instinct
They need to hear the gospel speak into their longing for touch, presence, and connection. Every human, created in God’s image and formed from the dust, is made for embodied covenant, not virtual escape.
Our culture catechises them into a counterfeit liturgy of detachment, and it is working. This shift should not make us smug. It should make us soberminded. Because beneath Gen Z’s sexual withdrawal lies something deeper: a loss of confidence in how to be human.
Sexlessness as a Symptom
We are facing a crisis of formation:
- Young people unsure how to pursue deep, lasting relationships
- Young men paralysed by passivity and loneliness
- Young women burdened by contradictory pressures, hypersexualised yet emotionally starved
- A generation whose imagination for love, marriage, family, and friendship has been formed more by TikTok clips than by biblical wisdom or embodied reality
When sexual activity declines not because of holiness, but because of relational collapse, it is not a moral victory. It is a warning sign that the foundations of relational life are fracturing.
Sex Isn’t Gone, It’s Just Gone Online
This generation hasn’t abandoned sex. They have digitised it.
As researcher Justin Lehmiller notes, “many of them seem to be expressing their sexuality in a different way, and increasingly that’s through an internet connection.” What once was niche or taboo, such as cybersex, is now normalised, gamified, and commodified.
Sexting, OnlyFans, AI relationships, interactive pornography, and anonymous digital intimacy are not fringe behaviours. They are formative ones.
Here’s the danger: digital sex is disembodied and devoid of covenant. It trains the heart for consumption, not commitment. It offers the illusion of intimacy without the cost of self-giving love.
It offers the illusion of connection, but it is not real. It does not reflect the image of God. It malnourishes the soul, leaving young people hollowed by virtual intimacy and warped expectations.
So the Church must not simply shout “no” from the sidelines. We must offer a better yes. A better vision. A better story.
What Can the Church Do?
This is a moment not to retreat, but to engage. We must give young people what the world cannot:
Proclaim a Theology of the Body
Teach that the body is not an accessory to our spiritual life, but central to it. Our bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139), temples of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19), and destined for resurrection. In a world of digital detachment, we must re-teach what it means to be bodily and beloved.
Rebuild Relational Discipleship
Teach young people how to be friends before you teach them how to date. Form them as brothers and sisters before spouses. Disciple them into covenant love, not just compatibility algorithms.
Model the Messy Beauty of Real Life
Let them see hospitality, forgiveness, arguments, reconciliation, and patience lived out in homes, not just preached in sermons. Invite them into the lived rhythms of grace.
Reconnect Them with Reality
Create digital sabbaths. Eat meals together. Walk, talk, slow down. Teach them the liturgies of real presence in an age of curated absence.
Speak to the Ache Beneath the Silence
Behind Gen Z’s disengagement is a deep ache: an ache for identity, intimacy, and meaning. Don’t just call them to abstinence. Call them to Christ, where the deepest desires of the heart find their home.
A Moment for Hope
This moment may feel bleak, but it is also bursting with opportunity. We don’t need to mirror the world’s obsession with sex. Nor should we retreat into silence or shame.
We are stewards of a better story. One that is honest about brokenness, hopeful about redemption, rooted in the gospel of the incarnate Christ who redeems our bodies, restores our relationships, and reorients our desires.
Gen Z doesn’t need to be drawn back into obsession with sex.
They need to be called forward into true humanity.
And that begins not with a slogan, but with a Saviour who took on flesh to redeem every part of ours.
This is not a cultural moment to fear.
It is a discipleship moment to seize.
