Sex with yourself is, theoretically, the time when you can drop the moaning and the sexy faces and just enjoy yourself. New data suggests we’ve found a way to ruin that too.
A 2026 Pleasure Census conducted by dating app HUD and sexual wellness brand Girls Get Off surveyed 2,183 people across 63 countries and found that 54% of Gen Z catch themselves “performing” during solo sex—thinking about how they look, sound, or should feel, with no one even in the room. Across all age groups, the figure sits at 44%. The same survey found 73% of Gen Z say appearance concerns make sex harder to enjoy.
There’s a clinical name for this. Spectatoring—coined by sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson in 1970—describes the act of mentally observing yourself during sex from a third-person perspective, evaluating your performance rather than experiencing your body. It was originally studied as a factor in sexual dysfunction and assumed to require a partner. The Pleasure Census data suggests the imagined audience is sufficient.
Performance Anxiety Is Ruining Masturbation for Gen Z
And once again, you can’t not talk about porn. A 2026 study found that women who watched porn reported increased performance anxiety about how they look and behave during sex. One participant said: “I feel stressed about not looking like the girls in porn movies.” The study found pornography led many respondents to view sex as performative rather than a shared pleasurable experience—a subconscious thought that doesn’t turn off when the other person leaves the room.
“For a generation raised on porn, it can be genuinely hard to unlearn the way we think we’re supposed to behave during sex,” sexologist Becky Crepsley-Fox told Metro. The internal audience doesn’t switch off. For many people, it eventually becomes the default, operating beneath every experience that was supposed to be free of it.
There’s decades of spectatoring research confirming what most people already know from experience: the moment your attention shifts outward, your body checks out. Orgasm requires presence, not an audience. Solo sex is the one place in the world where nobody else’s needs, reactions, or expectations are in the room. Using it to rehearse for them anyway is a waste
The only audience in the room is the one you built yourself. That’s both the problem and the only place the solution lives.
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