Many people suppose that with the enormous amount of information now available, everyone can create a great sex life.
But the number of people who are sexually frustrated, disappointed, confused, anxious, or clueless hasn’t declined, despite today’s data wonderland. In fact, young people today have less sex than young people did 10, 20, or 30 years ago.
From young to mid-life to old, why are so many people still sexually dissatisfied? There are multiple reasons, of course:
- People select an incompatible partner;
- People’s non-sexual feelings (guilt, anger, shame, fear) get in the way;
- People have mistaken assumptions about men, women, and sexuality;
- People believe sex and desire are dangerous;
- People are unclear how to communicate about sex, including what, when, & why;
- People think their desires or their fantasies are perverse, or that their bodies are ugly or ineligible for sex;
- People think they have a “dysfunction,” which both they and their physician try to fix using the exact wrong approach.
Confusing or painful first experiences also play a key role in lifelong sexual alienation, especially among women.
I said this (and more) in my 2012 book, Sexual Intelligence: What We Really Want From Sex, and How to Get It, by far my most popular book.
But there’s even more to the subject today than I explored 13 years ago. In addition to all the other reasons for modern sexual dissatisfaction, there’s now social media. Consider: 87% of Americans use social media DAILY. That’s more than the number of Americans who drive a car daily.
How does social media undermine sexual pleasure and closeness? Let us count the ways.
- The loss of human cues during communication
Every minute communicating digitally is a minute NOT spent hearing the actual voice of another person—with all its subtle moment-by-moment changes, and reactions to what you say or do. Similarly, it’s a minute spent NOT conveying emotion with your own voice. And it’s a minute spent NOT talking with someone face-to-face, unconsciously smelling them and perceiving their body language in a restaurant, car, office, kitchen, or bedroom.
To create sex that’s relaxed and intimate, people need a wide range of subtle communication skills. What words make someone’s face light up? What tone of voice brings someone closer—and what pushes them away? Most of us used to start learning these skills in childhood and young adulthood.
But texting friends or posting photos of your lunch teaches you very little about how to relate to actual humans, especially regarding sex and bodies. - “Research”?
Many people think they’re doing “research” about sexual issues by going to non-experts’ websites. But social media has “democratized” opinion, not expertise. If someone has 50,000 followers, or is (puh-leeze!) an “influencer,” does this qualify them to have an opinion on, say, Hormone Replacement Therapy? On the mental health of transgender people? Or whether someone should stay or leave a relationship after infidelity?
No.
But people are now depending on these completely unvetted and unreliable sources in a wide range of sexual settings: making decisions about what’s “normal”; making medical choices about reproductive, hormonal, and psychological issues; choosing how to respond to sexual situations involving conflict, anger management, power dynamics, gender politics, and reasonable relationship expectations.
Depending on ignorant strangers for advice on important life issues is a recipe for disaster. And social media is built to convince people to value the opinions and displays of others. - The fad machine
Fueled by social media, fads have overtaken many aspects of sexuality—where pleasure isn’t as much the point of sex as it used to be. Men are choking women during sex. People say they’re into kink or poly without knowing much about them (and then dealing with the predictable problems). People are adapting idiosyncratic sexual identities (“demisexual,” “asexual,” “graysexual,” etc.) that have no actual definition—people now say they “identify” as this or that, much as people say “I’m a Dodgers fan” or “I root for any team playing against Notre Dame.”
And yes, pornography has something to do with this fad orientation, too. - The velocity of narratives
On social media, lies and false narratives spread faster and wider than at any other time in human history.
False “truths” such as how frequently trans kids kill themselves; or how common campus rape is; or how many women climax from intercourse; or how infidelity is always traumatic for the “victim” (especially if it’s a man cheating on a woman); or how every woman wants to be choked during sex, are almost impossible to get out of the culture’s consciousness once established by social media.
Every one of us needs hundreds of assumptions, big and small, to get through a typical day. That’s especially true regarding sex, which for most people involve some anxiety and self-consciousness. The sexual narratives spewing from social media—whether from our friends or non-expert “influencers”—have a huge impact on our sexual choices and subjective experience. - The rage machine
Social media is especially adept at fomenting anger and creating profound enmity out of simple disagreements (or even misunderstandings). Today, people are urged to be “offended” instead of disagreeing, and once offended, to destroy their opponents rather than debate them.
Today, there are legitimate social questions involving a range of sexual subjects like sexual identity, sexual orientation, medical procedures, reproductive choices, the health of various relationship styles, and definitions of concepts such as consent, kink, intimacy, feminism, agency, codependence, addiction, masculinity, and pleasure.
But political correctness and rage are preventing what could be valuable and innovative conversations about these important and ultimately very practical sexual topics. This is even true within the fields of psychology, sex therapy, and in academia. We are all the poorer for this lack of debate.
And it’s hard to relax and enjoy sex—and impossible to have collaborative disagreements—when trust looks like a foolish mistake. - Dating apps
Do you know anyone who says “I love dating apps—they’ve improved my sex life so much!”? No, people typically say “I hate being dependent on dating apps, but what else are you going to do?”
People are now looking for algorithms when they date; my patients are trying to figure out how to have “successful” first dates rather than creating dates that they enjoy.
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Does this mean you can’t have good sex if you’re on social media? Does this mean you have to quit social media to have good sex?
The answer to both questions is no. But anyone who wants to do both—enjoy sex and social media—should understand how social media participation and dependence undermines sexuality, and take appropriate steps to protect one from the other.
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