In the US, nearly half of adults are single. A quarter of men suffer from loneliness. Rates of depression are on the rise. And one in four Gen Z adults\u2014the so-called kinkiest generation, according to one study\u2014have never had partnered sex.<\/p>\n
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In an age of endless connection, where hooking up happens with the ease of a swipe and nontraditional relationship structures like polyamory are celebrated, why are people seemingly so disconnected and alone?<\/p>\n
Chalk it up to changing social norms or shifting generational attitudes around relationships. But the bigger issue at play, according to Justin Garcia, is that we just don\u2019t crave intimacy in the same way we used to. \u201cOur species is on the precipice of what I have come to think of as an intimacy crisis,\u201d Garcia writes in his new book, The Intimate Animal: The Science of Sex, Fidelity, and Why We Die for Love. Garcia is unflinching in his diagnosis. He explains to readers that intimacy\u2014not sex\u2014is the \u201cthe most powerful evolutionary motivator of modern relationships,\u201d but that our hunger for it \u201chas been stifled by and misdirected in today\u2019s digital world.\u201d<\/p>\n
An evolutionary biologist and anthropologist who began his career studying hookup culture, Garcia is the executive director of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, a research lab known for its pioneering work on sexuality, online dating, and aging. (Sex may in fact improve with age, a recent report found). He\u2019s held the position since 2019, and in that time he has also served as the chief scientific adviser to Match, where he provides expertise for its annual Singles in America survey. In 2023, Indiana lawmakers voted to block public funding from the institute\u2014state senator Lorissa Sweet, a Republican, falsely claimed that Kinsey was studying orgasms in minors\u2014but, the following year, the school\u2019s board of trustees voted to abandon its plans to separate the institute into a nonprofit.<\/p>\n
Garcia\u2019s book covers a lot of ground\u2014the \u201ccognitive overload\u201d of dating apps, why humans are wired to be socially monogamous but not sexually monogamous, the science of breakups\u2014but its throughline is how \u201ceven in this bewildering era, where moments of human connection are becoming increasingly elusive, the search for intimacy remains the most human of human impulses.\u201d<\/p>\n
On a recent afternoon over Zoom, I spoke with Garcia about the attack on sexual literacy in the current political climate, what people got wrong about Gen Z’s sex recession, and why an AI chatbot won\u2019t save your relationship. It\u2019s all connected, he says.<\/p>\n
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.<\/p>\n
WIRED: What is the intimacy crisis, and why, as you write in the book, are we on the verge of one?<\/p>\n
Justin Garcia: We hear a lot about the loneliness epidemic. The research suggests that loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Psychological loneliness gets embodied in physical and psychological health. At the same time, there are reports that suggest that the numbers haven\u2019t increased all that much for psychological loneliness. But clearly its impact is more, and more people are paying attention to the impact.<\/p>\n
For me, there\u2019s a bigger umbrella. We are suddenly talking about loneliness at the same time that all of us have more connections than ever before. That\u2019s why I call it an intimacy crisis. We have more people available to us, particularly through internet and social media platforms, but the depth of the connections, the quality of the connections, is not there.<\/p>\n
You suggest that the intimacy crisis can lead to \u201cunprecedented and stark biological consequences.\u201d In what way?<\/p>\n
We\u2019re in a moment where the human brain is taking in so much information and so much of the information is threatening. It\u2019s what\u2019s going on in the news, in Gaza and Minnesota, with climate change, with global economics\u2014I mean, pick any section of the paper, it\u2019s bad news. That weighs on our nervous system. Just as humans\u2019 romantic and sexualized lives respond to environments with how they form relationship structures, they\u2019re also responding to this current environment. When the nervous system gets tuned up into a threat response, that\u2019s not conducive to social behavior and it\u2019s most certainly not conducive to mating. If our nervous system is detecting threats from all this stuff in our environment, that has all sorts of effects on our relationships. And if we don\u2019t have the safety net of deep intimacy, we can\u2019t effectively weather these storms.<\/p>\n
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