We stand on the brink of the 2020s, with sexual freedoms that the people of 100 years ago would find unimaginable.
And yet, increasingly, people are turning away from sex.
This ‘sex recession’ is a worldwide phenomenon, but Japan in particular seems to be showing the way towards an increasingly sexless future.
10% of Japanese men are still virgins in their 30s. The collapse of the country’s sex drive is having an impact on the birth rate too, with children becoming increasingly rare.
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No one is quite sure why Japan is leading the world in this worrying trend. Long working hours are sometimes blamed, as is the increasing popularity of the internet.
Many commentators point to the rise of the robots as a cause. The Japanese are the world’s biggest robot manufacturers, and the world’s biggest robot users.
With 300 robots for every 10,000 people the Japanese are increasingly comfortable working alongside robots and that relaxation is spreading out of the workplace. Sex robots , holographic partners and digital companions are more popular in Japan than in any other territory.
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For example, there’s Azuma Hikari the holographic character who lives inside the Gatebox. A Gatebox is a foot-high AI digital assistant – a little like Amazon’s Alexa – that is home to a lifelike holographic ‘fairy’ that keeps users company, chats to them and even emails them if they areaway too long and she starts feeling lonely.
Azuma is hugely popular with young Japanese men, who spend the ¥298,000 (about £2,000) to get news and weather updates and control their home heating and lighting, but mainly to interact with the tiny cartoon figure who relates their need for female companionship.
Of course, a growing robot population also means Japanese workers are more likely to become unemployed.
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And that leads to another reason why sex is on the slide. Peter Ueda, from Tokyo University directly connected this decline with employment.
He told CBS News: Compared to men who had a regular employment, those with part-time or temporary employment were four-times as likely to be heterosexually inexperienced in ages 25 to 39, and those who were unemployed were eight times more likely.
Hookup culture, too, plays its part. Apps such as Tinder offer instant gratification for serial daters but they also encourage shorter relationships that are less likely to settle into a steady sex life.
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Sex tech researcher Eleanor Hancock told Daily Star Online that Tinder culture is definitely making a dent in traditional monogamy: “One thing I will say is that the ‘swiping’ culture definitely dilutes the potential for meaningful & emotional connections, because it becomes so easy just to ‘swipe away’ and dismiss people over their looks. “
She thinks that if we continue to merge our sexual and technological lives, deeper social changes could be on the horizon: “Perhaps if we continue to categorise and organise our sexualities and potential for intimacy in such a way, it could lead to something even bigger than the sex recession you can see now.”
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Even people who are in relationships are experiencing a sex recession. Superdrug surveyed over 1,000 coupled-up individuals in Europe and the US to find take the temperature of Twenty-First Century sex.
One standout factor is how mobile phones are replacing sex in our lives. Women who use there phones in bed before they get up were most likely to report sexual dissatisfaction, while for me, it was mealtime use that seemed to impact on their sex lives more.
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Although it’s not a clear cause-and-effect relationship, using phones and tablets in intimate spaces is probably not doing our sex lives any good favours.
Will sex tech replace real sex in the future? It looks that way.
Dr David Levy, author of Love and Sex with Robots, predicts that advances in robotics and AI will mean that we will soon be considering non-human life partners: “The first marriage will be before, not after 2050,” he says.
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Jenna Owsianik and Ross Dawson’s Future of Sex Report estimates that teledildonics enthusiasts will be communicating with long-distance lovers with touch-sensitive custom-made 3D-printed body parts of lovers and sex workers by 2025, and one in 10 young adults will have had sex with a humanoid robot by 2045.
The message seems to be that technology is causing the sex recession, and technology will soon be along to fix it.
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