OH MY –
July 16, 2025 – For her new book, journalist Carter Sherman interviewed over 100 young people about why they’re not having sex. She says they’re “very horny” but also more isolated, self-conscious, and fearful.
In her new book The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation’s Fight Over Its Future, which chronicles Gen Z’s sex lives (or lack thereof), Sherman describes having a meltdown after one of her best friends has sex with their classmate, making her feel left behind.
“I fully broke down crying in front of my mom,” she tells me when I bring up the incident. She cried harder when her mom admitted she wasn’t a virgin at the same age. Fourteen years later, Sherman, a 31-year-old journalist (she works at The Guardian; the two of us also previously worked together at Vice News), has interviewed more than 100 young people about why they aren’t having as much sex as previous generations and, despite the narrative that they’re prudes, she found that many of them want to have sex—there are just a lot of complicated factors stopping them.
