Quality is more important than quantity: in France people are having less sex

FFrance is considered the land of love, but according to a study, people there are having less and less sex, and some prefer to watch TV series or go on social networks. A representative Ifop Institute survey published on Tuesday showed that love lives, especially among young people, have reached their lowest point since the 1970s.

The proportion of adults who said they had not had sex in the past twelve months rose from 9 to 24 percent between 2006 and 2023, and from 5 to 28 percent in the 18 to 24 age group. However, in the 25 to 34 age group, 94 percent had sex at least once in the past year.

While in 2009, 58 percent of men and women in France said they had sex at least once a week, in 2023 the figure was only 43 percent. Many people are unhappy with the lull in bed. 55 percent of men and 39 percent of women said they rarely make love. The number of dissatisfied women has almost doubled since 1996, when 21 percent wanted to be together more often.

According to the survey, the reasons for the decrease in sexual activity were that people preferred to watch movies on television or Netflix, scroll through social networks, play computer games or read a book. Compared to previous years, the principle of consensus agreement has also become more established. While in 1981 three-quarters of women under 50 said they sometimes had sex without really wanting to, that’s still one in two in the current survey.

Ifop research director François Kraus also spoke about the historical cycle. The 80s and 90s were a time of hypersexualization. Today we are moving towards a sexuality that is more qualitative than quantitative. “It’s counter-cyclical: what one generation does intensively, the next does less.”