The glance from across the room. The spark. The chase. The messy thrill.

Generation Z isn’t having as many of those moments.

According to data published in the sociology journal Socius, Gen Z is having less sex compared to previous generations in the U.S.

Between 2007 and 2017, the percentage of young women aged 18 to 23 years old who had casual sex within the past month dropped from 31 to 22 percent. For young men, that value dropped from 38 to 24.

More recent data from 2021 collected by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research’s California Health Interview Survey shows similar trends with 38 percent of young adults polled reporting they have not had sex in the past 12 months.

Lina-Maria Murillo, a professor at the University of Iowa who teaches in the gender, women’s, and sexuality department, said some of this decline in sexual behavior can be attributed to a lack of education.

During the height of the AIDS epidemic, Murillo said public programming and mass media was focused on promoting safe sex, destigmatizing the act in and of itself.

Now, during what Murillo described as a “conservative push” in terms of sexual education, she said abstinence-only programming is causing people to talk about sex much less.

Over the past few years, the Iowa legislature, in particular, has implemented sweeping reform to Iowa’s K-12 education system. One such change, Senate File 496, prohibits teaching gender identity and sexual orientation before seventh grade and would require schools to alert parents if their child requests to use new pronouns.

The bill also bans books describing or depicting sex acts from school libraries.

“The people I teach in my classes have often never come into contact with somebody who’s openly and honestly engaging in conversations about their body and their sexuality,” Murillo said.

Politics and sex, Murillo said, are undeniably connected.

She said the loss of women’s bodily autonomy in recent years, with the overturning of *Roe v. Wade*, among other legislative decisions, has made women more hesitant to engage in sex.

“The loss of access to abortion, the loss of access to contraception, the need for consent from parents if you are underage, that kind of level of surveillance — all of those things, in my view, have warped what it means to be sexual people,” Murillo said.

And the connection between politics and masculinity, she said, also plays a role in the declining number of young adults having sex.

She said shifting views of masculinity guided by political leaders and commentators have come about quickly and brought about a great deal of fear among women.

“In the last five to eight years, we’ve seen a radicalization of young men in this country who are listening to and watching content that is all that is premised on the subjugation of women,” Murillo said. “Not only in the workplace, but as partners, as mothers, as everything.”

Murillo also pointed to the emergence of digital spheres, causing young adults to have less sex. With the whirlwind of change associated with social media and online communication that has sprung up over the past few years, something akin to a new language has emerged.

A flirtatious glance is now a like on Instagram. The brushing of hands under the table is now a swipe on Tinder.

“It’s consuming our attention in a way that is absolutely not healthy,” Murillo said. “It’s causing this epidemic of loneliness — lack of human-to-human touch.”

Greeshma Joseph, a second-year student at the UI, said digitization of social interaction was especially exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Social cues — the non-verbal side of things — people didn’t get to practice or develop or use,” Joseph said. “It’s a skill that you need to use, or else it won’t be retained.”

Joseph said since the pandemic, social interactions more broadly have been more difficult to pursue. She said the sweeping scope of the pandemic made this a collective issue, as people, regardless of geographic location in the U.S,. were isolated.

Digitization has also specifically impacted the dating scene. Joseph said with the presence of dating apps, people are less likely to go out and meet people through organic interactions.

She said this shift has caused people to develop their online social skills, putting the development of in-person communication tactics on the backburner as a consequence.

Naomi Greyser, an associate professor at the UI, said digitization impacts dating and sex from a scientific perspective, too.

“The role of pheromones and glances and flirtation that can happen when you have sustained time in a group just don’t happen in the same way in group chats,” Greyser said.

Along with a sexual recession, Greyser explained young adults are also grappling with a romance recession, too. She said with online flirting and romantic interaction happening via digital spaces, the “warm stage” of romance is missing.

She said the “cool stage” of a relationship would be friendships and platonic connections, while the “hot stage” includes sex and sexual relations, but the internet makes that middle ground with genuine and deeper emotional connection is harder to find.

Murillo said the amalgamation of factors influencing sex and romance in the U.S. is evolving at a rapid pace, and the mass amount of information available at all times due to the access of the internet just adds another layer to the puzzle.

“That giant ball of cultural and social chaos, in some ways, has sent mixed messages to young people about pleasure and about joy and sexual exploration and in touch,” Murillo said.