Data Shows Gen Z Wants Movies and TV With Less Sex and More Platonic Friendships

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I consider myself to be nothing if not someone who's endlessly fascinated by what makes human beings act the way they do. A kind of amateur anthropologist, if you will 

And while I admit I'm confined to my own space as a Boomer, and will forever see the world from that perspective, I don't bear a grudge against the generations that have come after mine. I try not to pull that Socrates, “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise" way of looking at the young. Because I've met so many people in their 20s who are objectively much better humans than I was at their age. More thoughtful, generous, industrious, compassionate, responsibly. I can say in all humility I managed to raise two of them. Young men who have never blown their paychecks at happy hours on Cape Cod all weekend and had five bucks in their wallet to get them to their next payday, like their dad used to. 

That said, if you told me this is how the people born in the last 25 years would grow up, I never would've though it possible:

Source - No sex please, we’re Gen Z.

A new study conducted by UCLA found that American viewers between the ages of 10 and 24 wanted to see less sex onscreen.

In fact, a slight majority (51 percent of the 1,500 surveyed) said they wanted to see more content about platonic relationships and friendships. While 47.5 percent said sex “isn’t needed” for most TV shows and movies, with 44 percent feeling romance is “overused.” …

Rates of sexual activity have actually been in decline for years, with the drop being most pronounced in Gen Z. Psychology Today reports they’re having sex less often and doing it with fewer partners, and that’s especially true for young men. Gen Z adults are reporting a lower frequency of sex than people in their 30s and 40s.

The study comes after Jennifer Lawrence’s comedy No Hard Feelings started streaming on Netflix and sparked a debate on social media about the Oscar winner’s nude scene and whether it was necessary. 

I'm absolutely dumbfounded by this. Let's put aside the issue of Gen Z having fewer hookups than people in their 30s and 40s. Though even that is a total reversal of how things were trending for decades and something I don't think anyone could've seen coming. I've heard it related to the way men are being browbeat by the idea of all masculinity being toxic and have decided it's just easier to avoid female contact altogether. In fact, Jordan Peterson has said in his professional practice he's seen an all time high in male patients who'd rather just pay for prostitutes. And I'll add, they pay for the prostitute to leave afterwards:

It's this part about the movies and TV that baffles me. 

Again, this is probably my age bias showing, but I make zero sense out of this. Much of my entertainment consumption over the course of my life has been done in the pursuit of feminine beauty, implied sex, and female nudity. From the innocence of youth, like a childhood crush on Marcia Brady. To the preteen, like when Tatum O'Neal (who is my age) talked about getting a bra soon and made a bet over an air hockey game with Kelly Leak where he asks what he gets if he wins and she says, "Name it":

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To high school, when Phoebe Cates (also my age) the most popular nude scene in cinematic history:

To the early days of PPV television, when every cable subscriber in America at some point flipped to the R-rated movie in hopes of seeing some T&A before it scrambled. 

Hell, for me it goes back even earlier. My brothers and I still tell the story about our mom taking us to the Drive-In, hoping we'd be asleep after the first feature so she could watch some respected artistic masterpiece in peace and quiet. Only for there to be a scene where an artist was doing a portrait of a nude woman. At which point she rolled down the window, put the speaker back on the pole, and drove home in silence. Then there was the time mom allowed my older brother and cousin bring me over to the other Drive-In screen to watch MAS*H and Patton. And I saw just enough of the first one to see the part where Hawkeye and Trapper rig the shower ten to fly up to see 0.5 seconds of naked Sally Kellerman. 

Those moments were precious not only to me, but to a generation of American males. They were golden. And still come up in conversation to this day, despite the ubiquity of sexual content available at all times. 

So I don't get how it's come to this. We're just a dozen years removed from the time two movies about casual sex between platonic friends came out in the same weekend, Natalie Portman and Aston Kutcher in No Strings Attached and Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake in Friends With Benefits. (Ironic given that Kutcher and Kunis were platonic friends at the time and now are married, but I digress.) I would've bet anything around that time that's where movies and TV are headed. More attractive people hooking up in  a commitment-free, non-judgmental environment, reflecting the dating app culture of the times. 

But the zeitgeist did a total 180 on us. Maybe it's because Tinder and Bumble took off in such a way that nobody wants to see it on their screens? I can't say for sure. All I know is not only is Gen Z bored with nudity to the point they don't even want to see Jennifer Lawrence of all people go full frontal, they don't even want romance? Which has been the life's blood of Hollywood's appeal to female audiences since the days of silent films. It's wild to think that not only would 24 year olds rather not see the guy get the girl, they'd rather see them sit around and talk about … stuff … merely as friends and then go their separate ways. I just can't imagine it, but here we are.

I know I said I don't do that old guy complaining about young people thing. But there are moments like this I can't help but acknowledge that a lot of things really were better back in the day. For sure the pop culture was. I've posted this before, and there is no time like the present to bring it up again as a reminder of how good we had it:

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 I weep for you kids. I sincerely do.