The end of sex? More and more young people avoid it, study shows

It was also more pronounced among people who had attended college, according to part of the analysis which did not appear in the report but which was provided by the lead author. For 20- to 24-year-olds whose education stopped with high school, 6% of those born in the late 1960s had no sexual partners as adults, compared to 10% of those born in the early 1990s. Among those with at least some college education, 6% of those born in the late 1960s had no sexual partners as adults, compared to 19% of those born in the early 1990s.

It may be that this generation is getting a slower start all around, said Jean Twenge, the study’s lead author, who wrote Generation Me, a book about millennials.

“For a long time we’ve known that young adults are taking longer to get married, have kids, buy houses, have a stable job – all those so-called adult milestones are happening later,” she said. “Being 20 to 24 is not what it used to be – it used to be that a lot of them, especially women, were married at that time, or were living with someone and were living independently of their parents. 20-year-olds are like what 16-year-olds used to be.”