By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2024-11-29 21:56:34 | Updated at 2024-11-30 00:36:52
2 hours ago
A leading psychologist has revealed how a record number of people are leaving college as virgins with the appetite for sex dwindling among young people.
Dr Sarah Hill, who is a professor at Texas Christian University specializing in women's health, appeared on The Diary of a CEO podcast to talk about the birth control pill and its knock-on effects.
In one segment with host Steven Bartlett, she addresses how 'sex is trending downward' among college-aged Americans.
The expert explains: 'What we tend to see is that people are having a lot less sex than they used to.
'They're having sex later, they're having less. More people are virgins when they're graduating high school and college than there were in the past.'
Dr Hill says the downward trend is interesting when you consider that birth control was designed 'for men and women to be able to have sex without the having to have the fear of pregnancy.'
Backing up Dr Hill's observations, UCLA has been tracking behavioural trends for years, including sex, through its annual California Health Interview Survey - the largest state health survey in the nation.
In 2021, the number of young Californians aged 18 to 30 who’d had no sexual partners in the past year reached a decade high of 38 per cent. This compares to 22 per cent in 2011.
A leading psychologist has revealed how a record number of people are leaving college as virgins with the appetite for sex dwindling among young people
Another study showed in 2021, three in 10 Gen Z males report having gone without sex in the previous year.
While Dr Hill says the downward sex trend among young people is a 'very complicated issue that requires a lot of untangling,' she believes a gender imbalance in college enrolment plays a big role.
Data from National Student Clearinghouse reveals female students accounted for 59.5 percent of all college enrolments in spring 2021, compared to just 40.5 percent that were men.
The gap between the two sexes is widening, with male student enrolment declining more drastically than their female counterparts with 400,000 fewer male students enrolling in 2021 than 2020, versus 200,000 fewer female students between the two years.
Some admissions experts are voicing concerns about the long-term impact of this trend on the male population, as college graduates can expect to earn more than a million dollars more than those educated to high-school diploma level over the course of their working lives.
Some colleges are quietly implementing programs to attract more men while some are offering more places to male applicants than females in an effort to redress skewed gender ratios.
At Baylor University, for example, admissions in 2021 offered seven percentage points more places to men than women, who make up 60 per cent of undergraduates.
Dr Hill says the gender imbalance could be behind the fact college students are having less sex than ever.
She says on The Diary of a CEO podcast: 'You know, imagine that you're a college aged woman and you were looking for somebody who at least on par with you in terms of their educational attainment.
'Most college campuses are like 60 percent female and [40 percent male].
Dr Sarah Hill, who is a professor at Texas Christian University specializing in women's health, appeared on The Diary of a CEO podcast
'Just simply playing the odds... women are going to have a harder time finding somebody within their pool that they can get together with.
'[In turn], this is going to mean less less dating for some of these women and and less sex.'
According to the latest statistics from the World Population Review, the average American loses their virginity at 18.4 years old.
This compares to a 2017 study which found the average age that Americans first have sex is 17 years.
Other topics Dr Hill addresses in her podcast include sex appetite across genders, 'daddy issues' and the repercussions if men had to take a contraceptive pill.
She also reveals how being on a hormonal birth control pill can dampen a woman's appetite for sex.
Explaining how this works, the psychologist says: 'When you flatline a woman's own production of hormones and replace them with a daily dose of synthetic progesterone this does a few things to a women's sexual psychology.
'The first thing that it does, is it turns off that estrogen surge that you get right prior to ovulation that's related to a heightened preference for sex.'
Dr Hill says a decreased libido among women when they are on a hormonal birth control is a 'very common response,' as less testosterone is also produced.
She adds: 'The... thing that happens on hormonal birth control that can lead to a decrease in libido is that all of those synthetic hormones that are in hormonal birth control they tend to lead to an increase in what's known as sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG).
'What it does... this is something that's released by the liver and it binds up free testosterone... so it binds up testosterone and makes it inactive in the body.
'Testosterone, even though we tend to think of it as like a guy thing, is a male
hormone [which is] actually really important in terms of promoting women's sexual desire and women who are on hormonal birth control have levels of free testosterone that are about 60 percent lower than that of their naturally cycling peers.
'So what this means is that you have another blow to women's sexual desire when they're on hormonal birth control.
'Those low levels of estrogen and then really low levels of free testosterone.... those two things work together to suppress sexual desire in women.'
The psychologist spent a decade taking the contraceptive Pill to prevent pregnancy and went on to write a book - How the Pill Changes Everything - detailing how the medication can impact personality.
