I believe these youngsters are technicallyreferring to streaming platforms, but I’m too busy fetching the smelling salts and dusting down my VHS tape of The Thorn Birds to quibble.
What can I say, kids? Back in the day there was so little rumpy-pumpy around that the transgressive weirdness of a priest getting it on in the Australian outback was widely regarded as somewhere between appointment TV and mann(ah!) from heaven. And I say this as a card-carrying convent girl.
But back to the facts. Research by scientists at University of California, Los Angeles has revealed that when it comes to both the big and small screen, 51.5 per cent of 10- to 24-year-olds want more content focused on friendships and platonic relationships.
Almost half (47.5 per cent) of adolescents reported sex was “not needed for most plots” and a similar amount (44.3 per cent) said romance was overused.
Terribly mature? Or just terrible? I know I’m showing my age when I say I find it verging on tragic that the glorious (and yes, gut-wrenching) age of the teenage crush might officially be over. Killed, stone dead, most probably in a kinky choking incident, by online porn.
Studies have already shown that Gen Zers, born between 1996 and 2012, are having fewer sexual relationships than their older counterparts. A Rutger University survey found those aged between 18-23 are having 14 per cent less sex than the generation before, and according to sex-toy brand Lovehoney, one in four 18-24 year olds have never had sex – sorry, “partnered sex”.
Meanwhile this is a cohort tripping over itself to debate, discuss and delineate ever more niche genders – last year the Whitehall wokeys at the Civil Service informed its staff there were “more than 100″ gender identities.
No wonder young people are paralysed; far better to refrain than risk upsetting the omni-demi-intergender brigade. There are sound, if depressing reasons why the portmanteau term “puriteen” went viral not so long ago.
Research by scientists at the University of California found that 51.5 per cent of 10- to 24-year-olds want more content focused on platonic relationships in movies and TV shows. Photo / 123RF
Those then are the facts. Now to the feelings. Ours. Not theirs. My generation of parents feels crushed, frankly. Why? Because having endured snowflakey Millennials constantly wanging on about safe spaces and bursting into existential tears if anyone clapped, we expected better of our fierce little Gen Zers, forged in the white heat of TikTok challenges.
It’s the same principle as Prime Ministers; boring, fun, boring, fun, bonkers, boring, fun. It also explains why bookies’ favourite Michael McIntyre is a shoo-in for Number 10 come the next election.
Generation Z were supposed to be refreshingly robust and gung-ho. They would dispense with all that wishy-washy “we’re not comfortable with that” feeble collectivity in favour of headstrong independence and “you do you” individualism. That’s what we ordered at any rate.
But it looks suspiciously like this next generation is simply differently screwed up in its earnest bid to individuate – by defining absolutely everything. Assuming a frisky Gen Zer manages to make the right match on the gender smorgasbord, and engage in lovely congress with someone they find irresistibly cute – then comes the minute calibration of What It Means.
In old money, once you’d snogged wildly in a club, slept with them, been out four times and hung out with each other’s friends, you were de facto dating.
Nowadays it’s a weirdly convoluted progression. There are hook ups (with the same person). There’s keeping it casual (ditto). There’s still seeing other people. There’s exclusive. There’s introducing someone to your circle. There’s having them sleep over in your bed at your mum’s house. And that, contrary to the (adult) optics, is still not classed as official.
You might come downstairs one morning to find a dishevelled, barefoot girl lounging on your sofa wearing your son’s sweatshirt and eating a bowl of cereal but don’t you dare call it a relationship, or (horror of horrors) joke about “friends with benefits”. That is so 2011 reductive of you.
It’s a situationship. Call it anything else and your boy, your girl, your they or your them will never again trust or confide in you. No pressure.
As the word suggests, a situationship is meant to be less restrictive and more relaxed. Coolio. In reality it’s fraught with uncertainty and insecurity, neither partner knows what on earth is going on and it’s deemed extremely uncoolio to ask.
No wonder our uptight teens find happy, laughing Netflix romcoms a complete turn off. Talk about unrealistic garbage.
I’ll leave it there, I think. I’d be lying if I claimed to understand how a situationship segues into a relationship or a relationship into boyfriend-and-girlfriend territory.
All I do know is that at some point in the future I’d like to be a grandmother, so I hope Generation Z will eventually put down their smartphones and try the sex thing. Who knows, they might just like it.
- Judith Woods writes features and a weekly column for The Daily Telegraph
