美国人性生活减少，元凶是高科技？

美国人的性欲看来出了问题。

美国医学期刊《性行为档案》的新近研究显示，前几年美国成年人的性生活比上世纪90年代少，全年总次数减少了九次（从年均不到65次降至不足55次）。

这已经成为美国社会整体现象，不分性别、年龄、种族、工作，以及婚姻状况。但在已婚或者与爱侣同居的美国人之中趋势尤为突出。这类人前几年一年内的性生活次数比本世纪初年度水平减少了16次。

即便性生活普遍减少，有伴侣的美国人也可能比没有男女朋友的单身人士性生活多。该问题研究者、之一《我一代》（Generation Me）的作者简·特文奇指出：“两个人擦出感情火花自然比较容易发生性关系，但很显然，如果一个人有关系稳定的伴侣，性生活会更频繁。”

美国人性生活减少可以部分归咎于人口因素：同居的美国人减少了（2014年，59%的美国人与伴侣同住，1986年还占比66%）。

但人口趋势转变并不是性生活减少的全部原因，这一下降趋势始于2008年。对于为何美国人“性趣”下降，特文奇还有一种解释：科技。更具体地说，是在本世纪第一个十年将近时，智能手机和流媒体服务兴起。

特文奇解释说：“现在的娱乐业娱乐性更强，几乎有求必应。只要你想要，随时都可以得到。数字硬盘录像机（DVR）也更普及。”换句话说，我们可能忙于看电视节目，玩视频游戏，通过Snapchat之类社交媒体和朋友聊天，无暇过性生活。

虽然目前这只是凭直觉得出的解释，但确实很有说服力。特文奇说：“回想下过去十年发生了什么。”十年前，我们生活的环境还不像现在：移动设备屏幕随处可见，社交媒体不断更新换代，在视频网站Hulu可以观看长达180集的上世纪90年代大火美剧《黄金女郎》（The Golden Girls）。

由此看来，美国人只能牺牲性生活了。（财富中文网）

译者：pessy

审稿：夏林

As a nation, our sex drive appears to be on the fritz.

American adults had less sex in the early 2010s than they did in the 1990s, to the tune of nine fewer times a year, according to new research published in Archives of Sexual Behavior. (That’s a drop from a yearly average in the low 60s, to one in the low 50s.)

This slump holds true regardless of gender, age, race, work or marital status, although it’s most precipitous for American who were married or living with a romantic partner, a group that reported having sex 16 fewer times per year in the early 2010s when compared to the early 2000s.

Even after this sharp decline, however, if you’re in relationship you’re still likely having more sex than your peers who aren’t. “Tinder supposedly makes it easier to have sex on tap, but it’s pretty well established that people with a steady partner tend to have sex more often,” says Jean Twenge, one of the study’s researchers and the author of Generation Me.

Part of this sexual drop off, then, can attributed to changing demographics: Fewer Americans are living with a significant other (in 2014, 59% of the population was living with a partner versus 66% in 1986).

But this shift doesn’t account for the entire decline, which started in earnest in 2008. Twenge has another theory on why we’re getting frisky less frequently: technology. More specifically, the rise of smartphones and streaming services, which began gaining real traction in the late 2000s.

“Entertainment is more entertaining now, it’s more on demand — you can access it anytime you want,” she says. “DVRs became more common right around that time, too.” In other words, we might be too busy binge watching shows, playing video games, and Snapchatting our friends to bother having sex.

While the explanation is just a hunch (for now), it’s a convincing one. “Think about what’s happened over the last 10 years,” Twenge says. A decade ago we were all living in a world without ubiquitous screens, constant social media updates, and all 180 episodes of The Golden Girls available to stream on Hulu.

And so, it seems, we resorted to sex.