Many rites of passage were taken away by the pandemic: graduation ceremonies, freshers’ week and parties. But for some students, the biggest worry is what they haven’t lost: their virginity.
Counsellors say people in their late teens and twenties are coming to them anxious that Covid has kept them celibate.
Those aged 18-24 reported the biggest decline in sex in the first year of the pandemic, according to Professor Kirstin Mitchell, of Glasgow University. She is an investigator on the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles Covid study and said: “We found that after one year of the pandemic, people reported fewer partners, fewer new partners and less frequent sex. This was especially the case for young people.”
The study’s findings have yet to be published but Mitchell said the trends were already clear. “In any given year, there are a cohort of young people who would have started having sex in that year,” she said.
“When you’re in midlife, one year can look much like the next. But when you’re a young person, each year brings key developmental experiences. And so there is that cohort of young people for whom that period of sexual development and gaining new sexual experiences is a lost year, and what effect that will have in the longer term we just don’t know.”
Message boards on the Student Room, an online forum, are peppered with people despairing at the pandemic’s role in their sex life. One 22-year-old man wrote: “There is no hope for me. This pandemic destroyed my social life and college experience. Covid has destroyed in-person socialisation permanently.”
Another wrote: “I have just graduated and am unemployed living at home.
I am 24 and still a virgin and haven’t started dating. I missed the opportunity whilst at university. Now I have graduated I am alone at home with not many connections to anyone and nobody wants to be social due to the pandemic. How do I meet women in this situation knowing I am already behind in life?”
Jo Coker, a psychosexual therapist with the College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists, said: “Covid has had, in many ways, a devastating influence for young people because for a good period of time, they were pretty much locked up. Some feel that they’ve lost out on social experiences that may have led them to the partner that they might have wanted to lose their virginity to. A lot of them feel robbed.”
Cate Campbell, a sex therapist, said that the stigma attached to delaying sex was causing some to panic about the impact of the pandemic. “I’ve had men in particular saying, ‘I’ve lost two years and by the time I’m on track, I’ll be in my twenties and it’s too late,’ and they feel a lot of shame about that,” she said.
Campbell said the anxiety around sexual experience was exacerbated by a lack of social contact. “Their social lives have been cut off at the knees. So there’s not been much opportunity to develop and you do need to keep your confidence going. You do need to be interacting socially with other people to feel it’s OK and to not feel like you’re a weirdo.”
Even before the pandemic, more young people were leaving sex until later than their parents’ generation. One in eight millennials had not had sex until the age of 26, compared with one in 20 in their parents’ generation, according to official data published in 2018.
The figures come from the Next Steps project, which tracked 16,000 young people born in 1989-90 from the age of 14 and is managed by University College London.
The trend has in part been attributed to a fear of intimacy as porn and social media proliferate unrealistic body images.
*Emily Dugan, Social Affairs Correspondent*
Sunday December 12
Bloody irresponsible students, going about breaking COVID rules, out there having parties and shagging each other, they just can’t keep it in their pants for…
Er, wait, hold on…
I mean I understand what they’re saying but at the same time I think minimising the affects of covid on society is a lil more important than someone getting their hanky panky on
Players are gonna play anyway…but it must be awful to be a teenager/early 20s these days
Just had one of those private chat messages from someone whose last comment on reddit was on r/bigtitsinbikinis nearly three weeks ago.
As it was an inquiry about this post I shall leave my reply to them here:
>Get help.
Honestly my experience of uni was that it was a shit environment for finding someone to have sex with anyway. I lost my virginity at 15, and then had a 6 year dry spell between 17 and 23 – all the years I was at university.
Mainly this is just a consequence of the idea that everyone at that age is supposed to be single and having sex all the time. Of the people who are single, only a small amount have sex with different partners frequently. People being relationship-averse is a surefire way to create sexual frustration.
[removed]
Tbh every time I’ve had sex with someone I didn’t know that well I regretted it fairly soon after. A proper relationship is much more important and whilst sex is part of that it’s not everything. I’ve had much healthier relationships after leaving uni.
The idea of students universally being at it like rabbits on viagra is quite exaggerated anyway. Plenty aren’t, plenty don’t want to, plenty can’t even if they *do* want to.
It’s no different to being an older adult. If you’re not sociable, or confident, if you don’t feel (or just aren’t) desirable, if you are asexual, if you just aren’t in the mood, and so on. Plenty of people are fine with talking to a prospective sexual partner just platonically, but are just too scared to push the button, as it were.
There is a stereotype that all students have to be hypersocial and cannot graduate without thousands of friends for life, a bedpost notched to falling apart, and a perfect life partner you will shortly lead down the aisle. This stereotype leads to FOMO and people becoming depressed.
In my experience rampant sex only happened as a result of a hopeless drunken, forgettable and indeed regrettable fumble with someone you might not have known too well (this may very well cross a legal line), or you’d met your partner through other means and formed some kind of relationship with them. Both of these are true in other walks of life and you don’t need to be a student to achieve either.
I bet dating apps have had a huge surge. Sucks for the unphotogenic students tho I guess.
I would much rather work in a Ugandan gold mine than be a student these days. As their lives are so difficult.
12 comments
Many rites of passage were taken away by the pandemic: graduation ceremonies, freshers’ week and parties. But for some students, the biggest worry is what they haven’t lost: their virginity.
Counsellors say people in their late teens and twenties are coming to them anxious that Covid has kept them celibate.
Those aged 18-24 reported the biggest decline in sex in the first year of the pandemic, according to Professor Kirstin Mitchell, of Glasgow University. She is an investigator on the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles Covid study and said: “We found that after one year of the pandemic, people reported fewer partners, fewer new partners and less frequent sex. This was especially the case for young people.”
The study’s findings have yet to be published but Mitchell said the trends were already clear. “In any given year, there are a cohort of young people who would have started having sex in that year,” she said.
“When you’re in midlife, one year can look much like the next. But when you’re a young person, each year brings key developmental experiences. And so there is that cohort of young people for whom that period of sexual development and gaining new sexual experiences is a lost year, and what effect that will have in the longer term we just don’t know.”
Message boards on the Student Room, an online forum, are peppered with people despairing at the pandemic’s role in their sex life. One 22-year-old man wrote: “There is no hope for me. This pandemic destroyed my social life and college experience. Covid has destroyed in-person socialisation permanently.”
Another wrote: “I have just graduated and am unemployed living at home.
I am 24 and still a virgin and haven’t started dating. I missed the opportunity whilst at university. Now I have graduated I am alone at home with not many connections to anyone and nobody wants to be social due to the pandemic. How do I meet women in this situation knowing I am already behind in life?”
Jo Coker, a psychosexual therapist with the College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists, said: “Covid has had, in many ways, a devastating influence for young people because for a good period of time, they were pretty much locked up. Some feel that they’ve lost out on social experiences that may have led them to the partner that they might have wanted to lose their virginity to. A lot of them feel robbed.”
Cate Campbell, a sex therapist, said that the stigma attached to delaying sex was causing some to panic about the impact of the pandemic. “I’ve had men in particular saying, ‘I’ve lost two years and by the time I’m on track, I’ll be in my twenties and it’s too late,’ and they feel a lot of shame about that,” she said.
Campbell said the anxiety around sexual experience was exacerbated by a lack of social contact. “Their social lives have been cut off at the knees. So there’s not been much opportunity to develop and you do need to keep your confidence going. You do need to be interacting socially with other people to feel it’s OK and to not feel like you’re a weirdo.”
Even before the pandemic, more young people were leaving sex until later than their parents’ generation. One in eight millennials had not had sex until the age of 26, compared with one in 20 in their parents’ generation, according to official data published in 2018.
The figures come from the Next Steps project, which tracked 16,000 young people born in 1989-90 from the age of 14 and is managed by University College London.
The trend has in part been attributed to a fear of intimacy as porn and social media proliferate unrealistic body images.
*Emily Dugan, Social Affairs Correspondent*
Sunday December 12
Bloody irresponsible students, going about breaking COVID rules, out there having parties and shagging each other, they just can’t keep it in their pants for…
Er, wait, hold on…
I mean I understand what they’re saying but at the same time I think minimising the affects of covid on society is a lil more important than someone getting their hanky panky on
Players are gonna play anyway…but it must be awful to be a teenager/early 20s these days
Just had one of those private chat messages from someone whose last comment on reddit was on r/bigtitsinbikinis nearly three weeks ago.
As it was an inquiry about this post I shall leave my reply to them here:
>Get help.
Honestly my experience of uni was that it was a shit environment for finding someone to have sex with anyway. I lost my virginity at 15, and then had a 6 year dry spell between 17 and 23 – all the years I was at university.
Mainly this is just a consequence of the idea that everyone at that age is supposed to be single and having sex all the time. Of the people who are single, only a small amount have sex with different partners frequently. People being relationship-averse is a surefire way to create sexual frustration.
[removed]
Tbh every time I’ve had sex with someone I didn’t know that well I regretted it fairly soon after. A proper relationship is much more important and whilst sex is part of that it’s not everything. I’ve had much healthier relationships after leaving uni.
The idea of students universally being at it like rabbits on viagra is quite exaggerated anyway. Plenty aren’t, plenty don’t want to, plenty can’t even if they *do* want to.
It’s no different to being an older adult. If you’re not sociable, or confident, if you don’t feel (or just aren’t) desirable, if you are asexual, if you just aren’t in the mood, and so on. Plenty of people are fine with talking to a prospective sexual partner just platonically, but are just too scared to push the button, as it were.
There is a stereotype that all students have to be hypersocial and cannot graduate without thousands of friends for life, a bedpost notched to falling apart, and a perfect life partner you will shortly lead down the aisle. This stereotype leads to FOMO and people becoming depressed.
In my experience rampant sex only happened as a result of a hopeless drunken, forgettable and indeed regrettable fumble with someone you might not have known too well (this may very well cross a legal line), or you’d met your partner through other means and formed some kind of relationship with them. Both of these are true in other walks of life and you don’t need to be a student to achieve either.
I bet dating apps have had a huge surge. Sucks for the unphotogenic students tho I guess.
I would much rather work in a Ugandan gold mine than be a student these days. As their lives are so difficult.