Rough sex is among the most popular sexual fantasies. In the survey of more than 4,000 American adults I conducted for my book Tell Me What You Want, I found that a majority of participants across genders and sexualities said they had fantasized about some type of “rough” sex before. However, I discovered a pretty sizable generational difference in these fantasies. Specifically, young adults (Generation Z) reported fantasizing about rough sex at a much higher frequency than any other generation. The older people were, the less likely they were to say this was something they fantasized about. 

Other studies have pointed to a similar trend, suggesting that Gen Z just seems to be a bit kinkier in general. But this isn’t just in terms of their fantasies. Young adults are physically engaging in rough sex with a very high frequency. As some evidence of this, consider a 2021 study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior that surveyed nearly 5,000 college-age adults. The researchers found that 79% of those who had a current sexual or romantic partner said they’d engaged in rough sex with that partner before. I should point out that what it means to have “rough” sex is, of course, very subjective. What’s rough to one person might seem pretty tame to another. That said, we do know that rough sex often includes activities, such as choking, that entail a certain amount of risk. 

This is particularly true when those acts are performed by people who do not have extensive knowledge of how to do them safely and/or when partners have not clearly communicated about their wants, boundaries, and limits. All of this raises some important questions, including why rough sex is on the rise in the first place, and how we can better educate young adults about this topic in order to promote sexual health and safety. We’re going to dive into these questions in this article, but before we do, let’s step back and talk about what rough sex even means to young adults. 

What Does It Mean To Have “Rough Sex” Anyway?

In the aforementioned survey of nearly 5,000 college students, participants were given a checklist of potential sexual activities and were asked to indicate which ones constituted “rough sex” to them. It turned out that there were several activities that a majority of participants endorsed as being forms of rough sex. These included: choking, hair pulling, spanking, being pinned down, being tied up, hard thrusting, slapping, biting, and scratching. 

Although there was clearly some degree of consensus that these activities fall into the “rough” category for most youth, it’s important to highlight that there wasn’t 100% agreement on any of them. This is an important point because it tells us that when someone says they’re into rough sex, we shouldn’t assume that their definition is exactly the same as ours. As always, communication is key!

Young Adults are Having Rough Sex, but Do They Actually Enjoy It?

In this same survey, participants were also asked about their previous experiences with rough sex. As previously mentioned, among those currently in relationships, most had tried it—and most also reported that they enjoyed it. The vast majority (85%) said that they enjoyed it “somewhat” or “very much.” So part of the reason why young adults are engaging in rough sex is simply because many of them are finding some amount of pleasure or gratification in it. What do they like about it specifically? In a separate survey of more than 700 college students published in the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science, participants were asked to compare “rough sex” to “typical sex.” 

Men and women alike said that rough sex is more arousing, that it leads to more frequent and intense orgasms, and that partners make a greater effort to satisfy one another during it. Also, women in particular said that they orgasm faster during rough sex. In other words, rough sex just seems to intensify the sexual experience in ways that enhance pleasure. But it’s not just that. Participants also reported that common reasons for engaging in rough sex were because they wanted to try something new, sex had grown boring, and they wanted to act out a fantasy. So there’s also an element of novelty here that people seem to be enjoying.

Why Is Rough Sex Increasing?

Turning to the big question of why rough sex is on the rise, there are several possible explanations. Intuitively, the first that many will point to is porn. Young adults today have access to the world’s largest collection of pornography ever known to humanity—and it contains a heck of a lot of rough content. We know that many young adults aren’t getting sex education at all (or they’re getting insufficient sex ed), which leads a lot of them to turn to porn as a learning resource. So it’s no surprise that rough sex is increasing at a time when porn has become the default form of sex ed. But the story isn’t quite as simple as this. Young adults grew up in an era where kink has become mainstream and is more openly discussed and portrayed in the media than ever before, thanks in part, to the Fifty Shades phenomenon of the 2010s. 

Kink has since become a fixture in popular books, films, television, and music. It’s also discussed openly on social media, with #kinktok alone having nearly one million posts on TikTok. Young adults today have more awareness and understanding of kink, which may increase their openness to exploring it IRL. One other possibility has to do with the fact that Gen Z is more stressed and anxious in general than any other generation. From financial worries to coming of age in the COVID-19 pandemic to concerns about the future of the planet, young adults are burdened by stress. So how does all of this connect to kink? Kink is an adaptive way of changing your headspace. And rough sex in particular is a way to take you out of your head and into the moment. As discussed above, a big appeal of rough sex is the intensity of it, so to the extent that kink helps you to be more present and temporarily forget about your worries, it makes sense that the most stressed generation would be especially drawn to kink.

How Can We Educate Young Adults On Rough Sex?

Rough sex is a topic that is not covered in traditional sex ed, which means that it’s incumbent on parents to step up, otherwise young folks are going to learn about it all on their own (and they may turn to sources like porn that don’t help them learn what they really need to know). For parents who are interested in expanding “the talk” beyond the basics, Dr. Debby Herbenick has a fantastic book titled Yes, Your Kid that provides a helpful guide to navigating more advanced, but still age-appropriate sexual health conversations. It even has an entire chapter dedicated to the topic of rough sex. 

Now, I get it—the idea of talking about sex with your kids is hard enough for many parents, but talking about rough sex takes it to another level! However, this doesn’t mean you have to get into specifics and technicalities of how it is done (after all, many parents may not know a whole lot about the topic themselves). Herbenick suggests that a starting point for these conversations could simply be talking about how a lot of people watch porn—then turning to how porn (just like watching a movie) is not a “how-to” guide for everyday life. In other words, you can start by helping your kids to develop porn literacy (i.e., understanding what porn is and isn’t). And then you can build on this by encouraging them to wait on exploring more adventurous activities until they’re older and have developed their communication skills. You can also help them to start developing the language or words to say what they are and aren’t comfortable with so that they have a template for how to express boundaries with a partner, especially if a partner proposes something that they’re not into. 

Takeaways

 Kink and rough sex are on the rise among young adults today. Gen Z is fantasizing about it and practicing it at higher rates than any other generation, which is why we need to do more to educate youth about the topic in order to enhance their health and safety. While conversations around this topic can be uncomfortable for parents, it is important to recognize that if you don’t address the subject, your kids will learn about it somewhere else—but what they learn elsewhere could put them in harm’s way.

References:

Burch, R. L., & Salmon, C. (2019). The rough stuff: Understanding aggressive consensual sex. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 5(4), 383-393.

Herbenick, D. et. al. (2021). What is rough sex, who does it, and who likes it? Findings from a probability sample of U.S. undergraduate students. Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Herbenick, D. (2023). Yes, Your Kid: What Parents Need to Know about Today's Teens and Sex. BenBella Books.

Lehmiller, J. J. (2018). Tell me what you want. Da Capo Press.