Leaving sex to birds & bees

It’s a universal truth that the moment your parents happen to walk into the living room a sex scene will start playing on TV.

We’ve all been there, scrambling to fast-forward the awkward bits. But will the youth of today be spared this rite of passage? According to a new study by the University of California, Los Angeles, Generation Z* are fed up with seeing sex on screen.

Of the 1,000 people aged 13–24 surveyed, 51.5% said they wanted to see more friendships and platonic relationships than sexual ones. Nearly half (47.5%) thought romance was not needed for a plot, and 44.3% thought romance was overused in the media.

This attitude seems to translate to ‘real life’ – Gen Z are reportedly having far less sex compared to previous generations, earning themselves the nickname the ‘puriteens’. For a generation that has especially liberal views about sex and sexuality, this may surprise you. Why might this be?

Well, post-pandemic, what Gen Z wants most is relational connection. The health insurers Cigna Group reports that young people today are experiencing a ‘loneliness epidemic’ and are twice as likely to report feeling lonely as those over 65. But it’s never been less necessary for a young person to have a meaningful relationship with someone before sleeping with them (all they need to do is click a few buttons on a dating app). Is it any wonder that when they see sexual romance on TV, their itch for relational connection doesn’t feel scratched?

Yet sex is everywhere. Psychologist Marisa Franco argues that ‘as expectations around married love have grown in the West and same-sex romance has been normalised, the space for non-romantic friendship love has shrunk.’

Gen Z are craving real, deep, platonic friendship - and our culture may just be catching up to this. New series The Buccaneers is a period drama which promotes sisterhood over romance. In the first line of the advert, the protagonist says: ‘Girls, here’s to marriages, men, parties… but darlings, we always come first.’ 

As we try and reach younger generations with the gospel, what can we take from this?

1. Check your blind spots

One criticism of the church has been its hyper-focus on marriage and family, often to the detriment of other relationships and single people. This may be especially difficult for younger generations - we need to be increasingly alert to this. 

2. Check your discipleship

We might have lots of people in our congregations, lots of homegroups and lots of ministries - but how meaninful are the relationships there? For younger people especially, do we need to put greater effort into facilitating them? In an article for The Gospel Coalition, Pastor Kyle Ritcher says: ‘Churches must be over-the-top hospitable to Gen Z … they don’t just want a free meal; they want mentoring relationships.’

3. Check your evangelistic methods

What a great gospel opportunity this presents. Full of redeemed people who are being transformed by the Spirit, church could be the place where friendships are formed most easily, most healthily and at the deepest levels - let’s welcome Gen Z into our gospel friendships before they satisfy themselves with weaker imitations elsewhere. Kyle Ritcher wrote: ‘Not infrequently, churches create barriers by requiring belief before belonging … most of the conversions we’ve seen came about not because people believed the gospel and then found community. The inverse is true: they belonged with us, saw how we lived, wanted the gospel to be true and then found out it really is.’

4. Check your evangelistic message

We can’t stop short and just cater for Gen Z’s relational needs with church community. We need to help them see that if our friendships meet their temporary loneliness, it’s just an image of how Jesus can meet their deepest loneliness. Our desire for connection is really a desire for relationship with God, and, staggeringly, He wants a relationship with us too.

Revelation 3:20: ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.’

*Generation Z were born between 1997-2012

Milla Ling-Davies is en’s Assistant Editor (Digital, Media & Marketing).