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Welcome to Playboy’s Gen Z Sex Survey. In partnership with The Kinsey Institute and the sexual health brand Julie, we talked to 2,373 adults ages 18 to 29 about their sex lives to get to the bottom of the so-called sex recession, and to get more insight on what’s really going on in the bedroom. Check out the full survey results here. This survey also appears in our Fall 2026 print issue. To have Playboy delivered to your door, subscribe here.
Sexual education in the United States has historically been nothing short of busted. Millennials were told that the only safe way to have sex was to … not have it at all.
The abstinence-only spiel was a bit of a nonstarter for Gen Z, especially considering that only 1.2 percent of participants in Playboy‘s 2026 Gen Z Sex Survey claimed they turn to school for sexual education.
It makes sense: Gen Z has always had a little thing called Google. Even now, during the reign of TikTok and when every other conversation feels like it includes a plea to “ask Chat” a clarifying question, Gen Z’s loyalty overwhelmingly lies with search engines when inquiring about sexual health: 54 percent who use Google or another search engine, compared to 5 percent who use an AI tool, with no discernible differences among gender, age, relationship status, or sexual orientation.
But Google isn’t perfect, and misinformation has big—some might even say lifelong—consequences when it comes to pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, and more. That is where women’s sexual health brands—like Julie, a sponsor of this study—come in, building their own chatbots as a not-so-secret third thing that’s neither contextless health advice nor a conversation with a trusted doctor. (Julie says that its Ask Julie chatbot draws only on content sourced and reviewed by board-certified medical professionals, and that it will end a conversation by admitting it’s not the right resource before offering a few links.)
“In the absence of a robust sexual health and development curriculum in our school systems, we are seeing more teens and young adults in clinics—on either side of the information spectrum—either being woefully unaware or having extensively consulted Dr. Google and then requesting broad testing and workup for normal physiologic findings, which they are convinced are ‘herpes’ or ‘cancer,’” says Lavinia R. Mitroi, MD, a pediatrician practicing in California.
In a perfect world, Gen Z would have enough real-life resources to make informed decisions about getting it in, but during a sex recession, they have to make do. The digital-native motto rings true once more: Google is free.
For the full breakdown of The Playboy 2026 Gen Z Sex Survey with the Kinsey Institute and Julie, go to sexsurvey.playboy.com.