College sex has always involved a little multitasking. Someone’s roommate is asleep three feet away. Someone’s thinking about a paper due tomorrow. Someone’s hoping this doesn’t turn into a whole relationship conversation. What’s new is the phone. Not nearby buzzing on the dresser. We’re talking actively in someone’s hand.
According to a recent survey reported by the New York Post, more than one in three U.S. college students admit they’ve checked their phone during sex. Not afterward. Not to change the music. During. The survey, conducted through the campus-focused apps YikYak and Sidechat, polled roughly 100,000 American students aged 18 and over. About 35% said they pulled out their device mid-hookup to send a text or scroll through a video.
It’s easy to read that stat as a joke about attention spans or to blame Gen Z for being terminally online. But phones aren’t just distractions anymore. They’re security blankets. They’re anxiety regulators. They’re muscle memory. For some students, reaching for a screen during sex isn’t about boredom or disrespect. It’s about habit, nerves, or staying tethered to a world that never turns off.
The same survey offers a more relatable snapshot of what college sex actually looks like right now. Nearly 23% of respondents said they’ve had sex while their roommate was still in the room. Meanwhile, 72% said they met their current or most recent partner in person, not through an app. That detail alone complicates the idea that young people have abandoned real-life intimacy.
Is There Really a Sex Drought?
A lot of the panic about a so-called sex drought focuses on adults slightly older than current undergrads. The National Survey of Family Growth has found rising rates of sexlessness among people ages 22 to 34. About 10% of men and 7% of women in that group reported they’re still virgins. An analysis by the Institute for Family Studies noted that sexlessness among young adult men has nearly doubled over the past decade, with a significant increase among women as well.
College students sit just outside that bracket. Many older Gen Z adults lost formative social years to pandemic lockdowns and remote life. Today’s undergrads are back on campus, back in shared spaces, and back to navigating sex in close quarters. They’re having it. They’re just doing it with their phones within reach.
Scrolling during sex isn’t aspirational. It’s not romantic. It does, however, feel like an honest look into how intimacy works in a world where attention is constantly split. For better or worse, phones follow people everywhere now. Even into bed.
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