Your bag is empty.
Playboy recently confirmed the reality of the sex recession with our 2026 Gen Z Sex Survey, in which: 20 percent of respondents ages 18-29 said they have never had sex at all. You’d expect, then, that a cohort of young people who aren’t having sex would at least be masturbating with some frequency—but you’d be wrong. Per our data, 36 percent of young adults haven’t even masturbated in the last three months.
And so I have to ask: if much of Gen Z is already abstaining from one of life’s greatest pleasures, what are they missing by abstaining from masturbation, too?
Look, sex is great, but masturbation has a lot going for it, too. It’s free, pleasurable and comes with none of the potential consequences of partnered intercourse. It is, by all counts, a normal, routine part of human sexual wellbeing. And for the most part, our culture is aware of all this. We’re no longer promoting the idea that jerking off will make you go blind and eating corn flakes to reduce our sex drive. With modern research, we’ve learned that masturbation is correlated with better sleep, reduced stress, and even a lower risk of prostate cancer in men. But over the last several years, the discourse around masturbation has nevertheless shifted. Just as the concept of “gooning” hit the mainstream, so did the rhetoric that masturbation was bad for men, in particular. Some men, for example, have taken up the pseudoscientific practice of “semen retention,” a term for not ejaculating for extended periods of time, with the belief that doing so will enhance their masculinity and make them more attractive to women.
“My Gen Z clients buy into the anti-masturbation rhetoric far more than my older clients do,” says New York City psychotherapist Matthew Willner. “The evidence supporting regular masturbation is solid, but according to many podcasters and influencers, masturbation is destroying men, stealing their testosterone, and harming their relationships.”
The thing is, when many people report problems with or criticisms of masturbation, much of what they are actually discussing is pornography. On r/NoFap, a subreddit dedicated to helping men not masturbate, the majority of posts are about porn addiction rather than masturbation, specifically. The subreddit itself is clear in this: “A porn addiction and compulsive sexual behavior recovery peer support forum,” its description reads. “Masturbation in moderation is generally healthy, but excessive porn use can have serious adverse effects.” For the majority of men, the problem isn’t just masturbation, but the fact that it’s driven by frequent, compulsive porn consumption alongside it.
And while porn is not a monolith and many people can indeed occasionally watch pornography without issue, Gen Z’s concern isn’t totally unwarranted. According to our data, 34 percent of young men said that porn completely satisfies their sexual desire, and while 36 percent overall haven’t masturbated in the last three months, another 40 percent of men said they masturbate daily. Meanwhile, one in three said they at least sometimes choose digital sex—including jacking off to porn—over IRL sexual experiences.
“Like any behavior, masturbation can be harmful when it becomes compulsive. If it gets in the way of leaving your home, causes you physical harm, or reinforces social isolation, those are important issues that need to be addressed,” says Willner. “Reducing masturbation to a healthy level can be a key goal for working with these clients.”
But regardless of whether masturbation has become harmful for such a significant portion of Gen Z, much of this avoidance may come down to one thing: control. Young people today (myself included, by the way) are coming of age in an era of instability. The usual paths of adulthood—going to college, getting a good job, buying a house, getting married—are both increasingly unattainable and not as fruitful as they were promised to be. The economy, politics, and even just our social lives are fraught and chaotic. Masturbation is thus one of the few arenas of our lives that remain in our authority, and for some, not masturbating delivers a greater sense of reward than getting off would.
The thing is, though, this all-or-nothing approach might not be doing us much good. Beneath this sense of control and accomplishment, says Willner, is often a sense of self-hatred. Many clients who are anti-masturbation, he says, associate masturbation with “feeling weak, worthless, and stupid. These negative self-beliefs go far deeper than a masturbation habit, and show underlying shame”
The current stats on masturbation, then, mirror much of our broader relationship with sex in culture. On either end of the spectrum, there are the gooners who are addicted to porn and masturbate several times a day, and there are those so wrapped up in shame and fear that they don’t allow themselves to masturbate, at all. Neither are “healthy” by any standard definitions, and both are missing the nuances of what masturbation can offer.
With so much turmoil in the world, don’t we owe it to ourselves to enjoy a little pleasure? “Everything in moderation” can include jerking off.
