University students aren't having sex – and parents don't know whether to be relieved or worried:
The current cohort of university students is having far less sex than their parents' generation – and it's not because of the pandemic.

By Helena Pozniak 29 April 2021 • 9:30am

It’s not like the old days. Students aren’t having sex. Well, some are, but not nearly as many as you might think. And if you're wondering why, it's not because Covid has kept thousands of them away from campus over the past 12 months.

The truth, according to a new report, "Sex and Relationships Among Students", is that they don’t want to have sex particularly - nearly six in ten [58 per cent] say making friends at university is more important than finding a sexual partner.

Just 16 per cent declared themselves excited at the prospect of having sex when they became a student. And male students are less sexually active than their female counterparts, with just a over a third [34 per cent] saying they’ve had sex during their time at university, compared to nearly half [47 per cent] of women, and more than one in ten [11 per cent] say they are celibate because they want to be.


Men are more likely than women to report they’ve had more sexual partners. And nearly one in ten of sexual encounters occur during university welcome weeks.

And this is important - if not least to dispel FOMO [fear of missing out] amongst today’s students, says Nick Hillman, director of HEPI [Higher Education Policy Unit], which conducted the survey amongst some 1,000 undergraduates last summer. It’s hard to enjoy yourself when you feel everyone else is having a better time.

“People have very inaccurate perceptions of others’ lives especially in relation to sex,” says Hillman. We don’t get better at this either - previous research found that people believed women might have had 17 sexual partners by the time they reached their 40s and 50s - in fact the true number is eight.

And here’s another overblown story, says Hillman. Newspapers love salacious headlines about students taking to sex work to make ends meet. “But self-selecting internet polls can’t provide an accurate picture of what student life is really like,” he says. And it’s a lot less exciting than we are led to believe.

“Given the evidence about many students’ poor mental health and the high incidence of loneliness, it’s important to build up a more nuanced picture… about how students really live,” he says.

Students have been accused of most things over the years - being lazy, having a three-year knees-up, binge drinking, drug taking, and more recently of being overly woke and sanctimonious.

This is the fault of baked-in beliefs, says one media lecturer at a London university, created by the days of grants and no debt, new sexual freedoms and the relative certainty that a job would turn up.

“I would say the student sex thing is a baby boomer obsession, and quite a male one,” she says. “The pill, easy access to abortion was a game changer for a whole generation and that did shift everything for students.”

Today’s universities are more sober and circumspect - excessive student drinking is abating, the past year has been a social washout for many, and even in a normal year it’s the libraries rather than the bars that stay open all night.

If students have any free time, says the lecturer, many spend it earning cash rather than having sex.

Her students - undergraduates and postgraduates – tend to be more worried about homesickness, juggling jobs and study, or whether they are going to have a successful career. “Sex is just not top of their radar.”

A focus the wild side of university life is a narrative peculiar to the UK. As a nation, we are unusual in using university as a way to leave home and grow up.

In other countries, students mostly live at home while they study - a passion killer if ever there was one.

“It’s cultural,” says Dr Sarah Nicholson, a retired NHS psychiatrist. “British nationals still think of university as an opportunity to find their way and experiment - a much broader experience than just going to study.”

But sexual mores have shifted, she says, and men are scared about getting consent wrong. At some universities, it’s compulsory to attend training around consent and coercion.


And only just over a quarter of undergraduates say that what they learned in their lives before university actually prepared them for sex and relationships when they got there. “In the old days, you knew the rules,” says Nicholson. “It was the man’s responsibility to make the first move.

"For girls, it was how much flirting you could do without ending up in bed. And for boys, how little flirting you could get away with before ending up in bed. Boys in our generation weren’t shocked if you said no. But they did know on first dates you could be as optimistic as you liked but you weren’t getting anywhere.”

Maybe technology has replaced the flirting, she says. Four in ten students say they’ve sexted a partner - mostly sending naked pictures of themselves, while a few have made use of video software to have sex.

“And that could never have happened in the old days - you couldn’t talk dirty on a payphone in the corridor.”

While education around consent is essential, says Nicholson, it’s up to peer groups to work out new norms as they meet and mix - only the pandemic has limited this.

“But you don’t want the previous generation telling you what the moral code is. That’s very much for your own peer group to work out.”


For parents, it's hard to know whether to be relieved that one's young adult children are not having sex at university, or worried that they're not having enough fun, or that no intimate relationships could mean they are lonely.

The truth is, ask parents today about their student children’s sex lives and most don’t have a clue. Some report that their kids are approaching sex with gusto, others say their children are more worried about debt, career, and the impact of Covid-19 and Brexit.

“I can honestly say that I have never worried that the pandemic, for instance, has scuppered my son’s chances of getting laid or put the kibosh on his prospective promiscuity,” says Rebecca*, a mother of a second-year undergraduate at the University of Birmingham.

“I don’t think young women need men and sex in that way,” says Tess, mother of a second-year student. “They are a lot less needy of male approval to get their self-esteem as they were in the past. Then, having a boyfriend, being thought ‘hot’ was really important. These young women are much better educated and empowered now. If my daughter meets someone she likes, then fine, but she’s not worried about it.”


The real wisdom from this research, says Nicholson, is to know whatever you do, you’re not alone. More than half of respondents say they watched porn, nearly a third say they’ve had an intimate relationship at university, a quarter arrive at university never having kissed anyone and 43 per cent have never had sex.

“And that’s the benefits of surveys such as these," says Nicholson. "People read them and say, ‘oh, thank goodness I’m not the only virgin’.”