Carter Sherman’s The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation’s Fight Over Its Future is a fascinating and often unsettling exploration of what some have called the “sex recession.” Younger generations are having less sex than previous ones, and Sherman sets out to discover why. While her concern seems to be that people should be more sexually active—a premise I don’t share—I found myself agreeing that the reasons behind the trend are troubling and deserve attention.
Sherman captures the reality well: “Today, we tell a different story about Gen Z and sex: Rather than having too much impersonal sex, they are not having sex at all. It’s called the ‘sex recession’” She cites studies that show that large percentages of young men and women reaching adulthood without any sexual experience. Behind the statistics are real struggles—anxiety, depression, social disconnection, and the distorting effects of growing up “terminally online”
One of the most striking insights came from Sherman’s interview with an evolutionary biologist: “If you’re in a threat response or a fear response, it’s not conducive to mating psychology. You don’t see two gazelles mating in front of a lion”. In other words, the uncertainty of our cultural moment—political instability, mental health crises, and social fragmentation—is reshaping how young people approach intimacy.
While I differ from Sherman on her conclusions about what would be a healthy sexuality in young people, I agree that the root causes—loneliness, isolation, mental health struggles, and a culture that simultaneously overexposes and under-equips young people—are deeply concerning. For those of us in ministry, this should sound an alarm. If young people are growing up anxious, disconnected, and unsure of how to form healthy relationships, it should provoke change.
Sherman’s book challenged me, even where I disagreed, and provided a sobering glimpse into the pressures today’s teenagers and young adults are navigating.
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