By Dmitry Samoilov, journalist and literary critic

Here’s the thing: the world many of us grew up in has vanished, and not because of geopolitics. Because of sex.

No, this is not a personal confession. It is an observation about culture. Sex, once treated as central to modern life, is quietly retreating. And the shift is so broad that it tells us something uncomfortable about where society has gone.

I came of age in the 1990s, when sex was everywhere. Not just in private life, but in public space. Advertising ran on the formula that sex sells. Some products logically lent themselves to erotic imagery; others did not. Yet a sexualized female body could be used to sell almost anything, including a glass of water. Newspapers, car magazines, even publications about the paranormal carried nude photo shoots. Television, long before late-night hours, included bedroom scenes as routine. Youth series revolved around the first sexual experience. Schools distributed brochures about contraception. Words once whispered were now spoken on air: orgasm, masturbation, intercourse.

The message was clear. Sex was not only normal. It was valuable, exciting, a permanent feature of modern life.

Thirty years later, we are told, almost casually, that sex is overrated.

This is not anecdotal. Surveys reflect a real shift. Research by the NAFI analytical center shows that 22% of people aged 18 to 25 are not sexually active. More than half of respondents report problems in their intimate lives. Forty percent cannot discuss sexual issues with their partner. Large numbers report dissatisfaction, lack of desire, or pain. Among women, the figures are especially stark.

More revealing still are value rankings. Among people in long-term relationships, sex comes last on the list of what is necessary for well-being. For many young people, it does not appear as a value at all. Health, money, status, travel, peace of mind. Now these dominate. Sex has slipped off the agenda.

Given how problematized the intimate sphere has become, this is hardly surprising. Sex today competes with an entire digital universe. Short videos, streaming platforms, games, endless online content. Why invest emotional and physical effort when easier forms of stimulation are available on demand?

Add to this anxiety. Choosing a partner now feels like navigating a field of red flags. Fear of manipulation, abuse, psychological labels. Then practical concerns intrude. What if it leads to commitment? Marriage? A mortgage? In such a climate, withdrawal begins to look rational.

How did we get here?

The period we remember as sexually liberated may have been a historical exception. Roughly from the 1950s onward, a unique combination of factors aligned. Contraception became widespread. Living standards rose. Housing conditions improved. Education expanded. Sexual behavior began to separate from reproduction and marriage. This was the so-called second demographic transition. Sex could exist for pleasure, independent of family formation.

For a few decades, sex became both accessible and culturally celebrated. We assumed this was a permanent achievement of modernity. But across most of human history, sex was not a sphere of self-expression. For the majority, it was tied to necessity, reproduction, obligation. Hygiene, privacy, comfort – the conditions that make mutual pleasure possible – were luxuries. Ideas like female orgasm or emotional compatibility were not central concerns for ordinary people.

We like to point to ancient erotic art or texts such as the Kama Sutra. Yet these represent elite or symbolic cultures, not the daily experience of most. What the late twentieth century did was briefly place sex at the center of mass culture.

That moment appears to be passing.

Now sex competes not only with digital entertainment but with a broader ethos of individual optimization. Time is a resource. Energy is limited. People prioritize career, fitness, mental stability, travel, consumption. Sex, with its uncertainties and vulnerabilities, looks inefficient.

The result is paradoxical. A society saturated with sexual imagery in the recent past is producing generations less interested in sexual practice. The language of desire remains in advertising and media, but lived reality is shifting toward disengagement.

Perhaps this is not decline but rebalancing. Sex, having enjoyed a period of cultural overexposure, returns to being one element among many, no longer the organizing principle of youth culture. Yet the contrast with the 1990s is striking enough to feel like a rupture.

That earlier era left a vast archive of films, novels, and memories depicting a world in which sex seemed easy, central, almost guaranteed. We may end up studying that period the way we study other brief cultural phases, through art and nostalgia rather than personal experience.

It turns out that the age when sex was treated as a universal value may have been an interlude, not a destination. And we are now living through the correction.

This article was first published by the online newspaper Gazeta.ru and was translated and edited by the RT team