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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.
In Playboy’s 2026 Gen Z Sex Survey, respondents couldn’t agree on whether Gen Z is having less sex: 51 percent said no, 24 percent said yes, and 23 percent were unsure. But 97 percent said they were confident they were right.
A more accurate description than the trad generation (a nickname often applied to this cohort because of their seemingly-traditional values), at least when it comes to sex and relationships, is the Barbell Generation: two polarized realities with little in between, even if in-between is where they would rather be. For a generation that spends an estimated five hours per day on social media, it’s not surprising that these platforms shape their perceptions of who is doing what with whom, and how often. The inevitable “filter bubbles” make it hard for young people to distinguish what is happening in reality from what is merely trending in their feeds.
Ask Gen Z what its peers are up to and you get irreconcilable answers. “I think more people are coming to Christ and realizing that sex is meant for marriage and it’s a sacred thing,” said an 18-year-old Californian. “Sex isn’t really meant to be something talked about,” they continued. “It’s a private moment between you and your wife.” A 24-year-old in Florida, however, sees a literal buffet of fornication in her social media feeds: “Have you seen Instagram and TikTok? Young people and younger are sleeping around with people like it’s a free-for-all at a fancy restaurant.” A Michigan 24-year-old sees both at once:
I think we are slowly getting rid of the stigma to have sex all the time and a lot of people are posting online that they are saving themselves for marriage.
The “trad” label didn’t come from nowhere. In a 2026 international Ipsos survey, nearly a third of Gen Z men—and 18 percent of Gen Z women—believe that a wife should always obey her husband. In a separate 2025 Match Group study, 80 percent of Gen Z singles believe they’ll find true love, more than any other generation before them.
The label collapses fast, though. One area where Gen Z is decidedly less trad than earlier generations is in its departure from heterosexual norms. Of the 2,373 Gen Zers surveyed, three in 10 identified as either bisexual, gay, or lesbian, and another 7 percent as other. “There has been a rise in conservatism and traditionalism, but there are just as many people who are open about their sexuality, especially in the LGBT community,” said a 20-year-old from California.
Many young people seemed to wish for a middle ground—neither conservative and slut-shaming nor entirely casual. In other words, nice, “normal” relationships. A 24-year-old Floridian sees her generation sorting into extremes: “A large amount of people in my generation are asocial paranoid puritans who have no sex, and there is also a large amount of people who have a seemingly absurd amount of casual sex. I feel that I exist in the middle, and there are definitely many people like me, but they are becoming more few and far between.” She concluded that “it’s becoming harder to have a normal, healthy relationship with sex,” while acknowledging that her “perception could also highly be influenced by what is shown on social media.”
There is a real-life gap between the kinds of sex lives that young people say they want, and what they have. Of the 42 percent of Gen Zers in relationships, 73 percent reported being satisfied with their current sex lives. Among singles, by contrast, over two-thirds were dissatisfied or neutral, with two-thirds citing “limited opportunities to meet potential partners” as a key barrier. Closing that gap may require something, well, traditional: putting down the phones and asking each other out.
For the full breakdown of The Playboy 2026 Gen Z Sex Survey with the Kinsey Institute and Julie, go to sexsurvey.playboy.com.