Gen Z approaches sex in a really weird way. We are having less sex than generations past and yet are simultaneously the kinkiest generation. The dominant perception at the 5Cs is that everyone is constantly having sex, all the while Gen Z is allegedly done with hookup culture. And worst of all, we do not use condoms when we have sex.
Personally, I am a bit tired of the discourse that paints Gen Z as the generation of puritans and perverts. It ignores the much larger problem plaguing our sexual habits: our lack of condom use poses a serious danger.
When we do manage to take another person to bed and make the beast with two backs, we are doing so with no regard for our own safety, or that of our partners. Yet our collective culture has created factors that encourage raw and dangerous sex, and Gen Z is already feeling the effects: In 2022, roughly half of all new reported cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia were from people aged 15 to 24. For our own good, we must push back on the influences that have indoctrinated us in favor of condomless sex. Not wrapping before you tap it could have unexpectedly deadly consequences.
Condoms are ubiquitous on college campuses, high school nurse offices, 7/11s and countless other places — and have been since the late 1980s. A majority of colleges and high schools invested in them specifically to prevent adolescent pregnancy and STI transmission, particularly AIDS.
So what’s causing Gen Z to raw-dog life in this way? Explanations go deeper than a simple desire for a little more closeness with one’s partner.
One reason is the lack of sexual health education across America. Sex ed curriculums vary across states, as there is no federal requirement for comprehensive sexual health education. 42 states require public school students to take a sex ed class, but only 19 require that class to be medically accurate. As a result, 90 percent of Americans today feel unprepared by the sex education they received in school. Instead, Gen Z, the generation that spends the most amount of time on technology, increasingly turns to the internet, searching social media or even porn, for advice and lessons related to sex ed.
Porn is certainly to blame here. Porn is easily accessible and more pervasive than any point in previous history, and Gen Z consumes online porn at unprecedented levels. We have gotten to the point that one in four Gen Zers now prefer masturbation to sex.
Gen Z’s dependence on porn has created unrealistic sexual expectations that leave no space for condoms. Most pornography does not feature condoms, and viewers of porn — particularly men — report preferring porn without condoms. This creates a situation in which our perceptions of sex are completely warped. A collective fantasy emerges in which we perceive condomless sex as being not only the norm, but the pinnacle of hot and desirable sex. We do not see condoms in porn, so we do not use condoms when we have sex.
Further, as birth control has become more accessible and readily available — a fact that is swiftly changing under the Trump administration — condom use has slipped the minds of many young people. This has played out before, highlighting how an emphasis on contraception does not suffice in terms of safe sex habits.
Prior to the AIDS epidemic, condoms were only viewed as protection against pregnancy. Consequently, this meant that the rise of other forms of birth control in the 1950s, such as oral contraceptives, contributed to a fall-off in condom use, eventually leading to the explosion of AIDS in the US. Condom use exploded in popularity as a means of protecting against sexually transmitted diseases during the AIDS epidemic. They functioned, and still do, as the most effective means of reducing the risk of infection and pregnancy with various STIs, including AIDS.
But, as time passes and we are farther away from past sexual health epidemics, the importance of condoms as a safe sex tool has diminished in the minds of many. The dominant attitude among young people that view AIDS and other STI epidemics as a thing of the past has led to a more lax view of safe sexual practices. Relatedly, the proliferation of STI prevention medication such as PrEP and the expansion of sexual health testing has lent itself to a sexual frame of mind that devalues condoms.
We cannot continue to hold this view of condoms. Birth control and regular STI testing, while effective and beneficial sexual health habits, do not go far enough in protecting us from the risks of unsafe sex. Not only do we have an obligation to ourselves to use condoms — we have an obligation to one another.
We must use condoms for the sake of preventing future sexual disease epidemics. The return to condomless sex puts us at severe risk for another epidemic, one that has the potential to ravage lives and communities in the same way HIV has both in America and across the globe.
In the early 1980s, we knew that AIDS killed people, and we knew it was tearing through communities at an unprecedented pace. However, for years, we did not know that HIV was an STI, and we did not know that condoms could prevent it. The link between the next STI epidemic and its prevention has serious potential to be similarly opaque. However, with that knowledge, we must pre-emptively shroud our spouts to avert similar crises before they happen.
A culture that downplays condom use, combined with a present administration that has effectively de-emphasized public health and worked to destroy healthcare across the country, makes it so that we are presently at a unique vulnerability to such a sexual catastrophe. And the defunding of medical research programs means we may struggle to identify its causes and preventions.
The good news is that there exists an easy, effective and tangible step you can take: wearing condoms when you have sex.
Condoms are incredibly accessible at the 5Cs. While cost barriers do result in decreased condom use nationwide, 5C students do have access to free condoms in a variety of places. Here, you cannot spit without hitting a bowl of condoms, so you might as well take some just in case.
We have a responsibility to engage in safe sexual habits. And who knows, maybe when Gen Z emphasizes safe sex, it will change your life, even if it doesn’t save it.
Alex Benach PO ’28 is from Washington, D.C. and wants you to know this article is not sponsored by Student Health Services.
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