‘Falling back’ and experimentation are signs of the times: Report on the sex lives of young people

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Coming of age during a series of lockdowns is a boring list of boredom busters after another. You finished Tiger King with your pandemic pup by your side, uploaded a bunch of TikTok dances, listened to all the K-pop, and one more game of Among Us seemed like a bit of a suss.

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“We all felt like we were trapped,” said Shamin Mohamed Jr., founder of the grassroots organization LetsStopAIDS. “We all knew there would be an end, but we didn’t know when. And that was the story.”

Young people wanted to try something new, and sexual experimentation is much more appealing than trying yet another sourdough starter. A survey published in June by Angus Reid for LetsStopAIDS examined the sex lives of 1,018 young Canadians. When the last of the COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, 18-24-year-olds told pollsters that over the previous three months they were more likely to have sex on the first date, send nudes, and experience more cases of ” relapse”. with ex during lockdown.

“Let’s say you’re locked up for two years and you’re going through puberty, learning about your identity, learning about yourself, and then you think, ‘Okay, I really want to try something,'” Mohamed said. But nobody was supposed to go anywhere.

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With mountains of erotic media available online and through a veil of sexting, they were ready for adventures, like trying out new sexual positions, toys, or kinks. Even the sex tapes came back.

The youngest cohort, ages 18 to 21, had a higher desire for adventure, the report says, as did non-binary and genderfluid Canadians.

“It’s fun to use sex as a distraction and a way to forget about what’s going on, so trying new styles and toys allows you to lose yourself more in the experience,” one person told the pollsters. And another: “The pandemic made me and my sexual partners more geeks.”

It wasn’t all dildos and porn. Nearly 60 percent of those surveyed said their sexual creativity stayed the same or declined.

“Somehow the desire decreased because we were forced to be together 24/7,” said one respondent. Others referred to declining mental health and concern about finances and their life situations.

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Thirty-seven percent of the young people admitted to having “relapsed,” saying that they got in touch with old flames. Mohamed said that he asked members of his organization about it “and the answers were very honest: ‘Hey, I lost my job, I have nowhere to go. Either I move in with my ex or I move in with my parents who live in another city. What we thought was happening was solidified with real data. There is something powerful in that.

“Young people were already at a disadvantage, they couldn’t get a job without experience, but COVID was causing the reduction of jobs that gave them experience. We need income to survive.”

The Sex Lives Report gave young people a voice, Mohamed said, “a tool that will give us momentum. This is something we can bring to our parliamentarians” to help drive education and resources. He noted that the report is a nationally representative survey that has results from every province and representation of BIPOC and LGBTQ2+ people.

TAKE A LOOK

Learn more about LetsStopAIDS at letstopaids.org. Read the Sex Lives report on bit.ly/3PK20dt.

No Time to Wait, November 20-21, is Canada’s largest youth conference focusing on HIV leadership and advocacy. Visit notimetowait.ca.

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