Let’s Talk About Sex: What Gen Z Really Wants

For anyone who has heard that Gen Z has opted out of sex, or is too disinterested in anything that can’t be found on a screen, think again: our latest survey of more than 2,000 Americans 18 and older uncovers a deeper dimension of their experience. 

Gen Z is the first generation to come of age fully digital-first, never knowing life without a phone in their hand, and it's changed how they experience nearly everything: content on demand, stimulation a swipe away, gratification before they've even gotten out of bed. It would be easy to assume that constant access has replaced real desire. 

When we looked specifically at Gen Z’s data from the survey, a very different picture emerged: a generation reporting real satisfaction and real desire, first-time gender satisfaction parity, and where women are leading on activity, openness, and experimentation rather than trailing behind. 

Forget the headlines: Gen Z wants twice as much sex as previous generations

67% of Gen Z respondents say they're satisfied with their sex lives, the only generation in the survey where that percentage is nearly identical between men and women. This gender parity is notable and implies a generation of women who know what they want and aren’t afraid to go get it. Gen Z is also actively learning who they are and what they like: 73% of Gen Z women and 70% of Gen Z men respondents say sex has only gotten better as they've gotten older, striking for those in their twenties and entering their 30s. 65% of Gen Z respondents report being sexually active, ahead of Gen X respondents (49%) and closing in on Millennial respondents (68%). This is not a generation opting out, whatever the headlines suggest.

But just like every other generation in our findings, Gen Z respondents want more sex than they're getting. On average, they're having sex about 7 times a month, but they want nearly double that amount. That's the widest want-versus-get gap of any generation we surveyed, and it's one that echoes constantly in the exam room, even when patients don't phrase it quite that directly.

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Gen Z women are more active, more adventurous, and more fluid with their partner's gender or identity

One of the most striking patterns in this data is how Gen Z women respondents are outpacing their male peers, not just in activity, but in openness. 71% of Gen Z female respondents had sex in the past month, compared to 59% of Gen Z male respondents. They're more curious too, with 30% interested in sex toys versus 26% of all respondents overall, and four times more likely than Gen Z male respondents to say they enjoy "switching it up and trying new trends." Only Millennial male respondents are more likely than they are to call their sex life "wild."

They're also redefining what compatibility means. 51% of Gen Z female respondents say their partner's sexual or gender identity doesn't matter to them, compared to 37% of Millennial women, and just 24% of Gen X women. In the exam room, this often shows up as patients talking about their relationships with a flexibility earlier generations didn't have the language, or the permission, for. It's not a small generational gap. It's a fundamentally different starting point for how this generation approaches attraction and partnership.

Desire burns bright

Gen Z respondents are just as likely as Millennial respondents to describe themselves as "sexual" (38% for both), and far more likely than Gen X (30%) respondents. Some of that has a straightforward biological explanation: the late teens through twenties are when sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen reach their lifetime peak, driving a libido that naturally tapers as those hormone levels decline with age. More than half of Gen Z respondents – 53% –say they're "constantly horny," well above Gen X's 43%, a gap that tracks almost exactly with the hormonal shifts as patients get older.

From a physician’s perspective, desire has never been the hard part for this generation. Access is. Gen Z patients often don’t articulate a lack of want, it's a lack of comfortable places to bring their questions: a young man dealing with performance anxiety or premature ejaculation, a young woman trying to find sexual health support without a weeks-long wait, or simply someone with a question too awkward to bring to the doctor they grew up seeing. Hims & Hers exists because that need has gone unmet for too long. If Gen Z is already rewriting the rules around desire, identity, and experimentation, healthcare has to be flexible enough to keep up, not the thing holding them back.

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