They’ve never been kissed: Japanese teenagers are losing love instead of losing themselves in it. They also have less sex and COVID-19 is one of the culprits.
In many countries, the first kiss is a rite of passage through adolescence, but a new survey of Japanese high school students has revealed that 4 in 5 boys aged 15 to 18 have not yet reached that milestone.
And things don’t seem to be much different for girls, with just over one in four secondary school students having had their first kiss.
These are the lowest numbers recorded since Japan started asking teenagers about their sexual habits in 1974 — and they’re probably a concern, in a country with .
The Japanese Association for Sex Education (Jase) study, by Japanese newspaper Mainichi, interviewed 12,562 middle school, high school and university students, asking them about everything from kissing to sexual intercourse.
The survey is carried out every six years and has seen a drop in first kisses since 2005at which point the number approached one in two.
No surprise: they also have less sex
This year’s report revealed that kissing wasn’t the only area that saw a drop in numbers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it has also seen a drop in the number of young Japanese people having sex.
According to the study, the ratio of high school boys who say they have had sexual intercourse has decreased by 3.5 percentage points since 2017, dropping to 12%. In the case of secondary school girls, it decreased by 5.3 points, to 14.8%.
Experts point out the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as one of the possible reasons for the drop.
School closures and restrictions on physical contact during the Covid pandemic have likely impacted many of these students, as happened “at a sensitive time when [estavam] starting to be interested in sexuality”explains Yusuke Hayashi, professor of sociology at Musashi University.
Record high… in masturbation
Despite the record low values, research detected an increase in the area: masturbation.
The number of teenagers admitting to masturbation across all demographic groups has reached record levels.
Low birth rate: a long-standing problem
The results come after another survey carried out earlier this year had to almost half of marriages in Japan are sexless.
In 2023, the then prime minister warned that the country’s low birth rate was taking it to the limit of its ability to function.
Some researchers have suggested that the population — currently 125 million people — could fall below 53 million by the end of the century.
A number of other factors have been highlighted as possible contributors — including the rising cost of living, more women studying and workingas well as a greater access to contraceptionwhich leads women to choose to have fewer children.
Japan already has the oldest population in the world, measured by the UN as the proportion of people aged 65 and over. At the end of 2023, Japan stated that, for the first time, one in 10 people in the country will be 80 years old or older.
