For some Gen Zers, sex just isn't that important after growing up in the #MeToo era

• A recent survey from BI found that only 5% of Gen Zers think sex is the most important part of a relationship.
• More millennials think sex is important than Gen Zers, according to the survey.
• Gen Z says coming of age during #MeToo has made them both "sexually open and sexually anxious."

Sex just isn't that important to many Gen Zers.

That's according to a recent survey from Business Insider, conducted in partnership with YouGov, of more than 1,880 American adults between the ages of 18 and 95 — including 647 Gen Zers over the age of 18 — on all things sex and relationships.

We also spoke to a focus group of nine Gen Zers to dig a little deeper into the responses and found that the generation — generally defined as those born between 1997 and 2012 — is reevaluating how important sex is in a romantic relationship.

Fourteen percent of Gen Zers surveyed said they believe sex is not at all or not very important in a relationship, and only 5% said sex is the most important part of a relationship. Conversely, 10% of millennials surveyed believe sex is the most important part of a relationship, and 8% of millennials say sex is not at all or not very important.

Among those who are deprioritizing sex in a relationship is 24-year-old Cobi-Ray Johnson. Sex is "honestly not that important," she told BI. "If I feel connected enough to someone, the sexual aspects that happen naturally off of that are really all that I need. I think it's more like a bonus than it is a crucial part of it for me."

Sex isn't "an inherent need" in a relationship, she added. "It's more secondary."

She's not alone. Among Gen Z survey respondents more than a third — 37% — said they hadn't had sex yet.

For some, like 21-year-old Jason Lorenzo, sex "could happen, it couldn't" — he's fine either way.

Lorenzo told BI that his partner's comfort takes precedence over his sexual desires. "I think it's more of a matter that I care about the person who I'm with to the point where I want to be in a relationship with them. I care about their comfortability. If they don't want to have sex, that's fine. If they do, sure, why not? Let's see what we can work around."

#MeToo made a major impression on Gen Z

This emphasis on comfortability may derive from coming of age during the proliferation of the #MeToo movement. The movement's focus on enthusiastic consent and criticism of sexual power dynamics had a profound impact on many zoomers.

"I think as much as there's a perception of Gen Z as very sexually available, I think there's another competing perception of Gen Z as overly cautious and anxious about sex in ways that maybe reflect the idea what is it like to sexually come of age when #MeToo was a topic of conversation," said 26-year-old law student Lindsey Weiss. These competing ideas of Gen Z as "simultaneously very sexually open, but also so sexually anxious" are "hard to reconcile," they said.

Sex is "not terribly important to me," said Tess-Mathilde Bryan, a 22-year-old florist. "I mean, I'm more fulfilled by intellectual conversations and emotional connection than I am by sex."

Bryan said that her feelings about sex are, to some degree, informed by her past relationship traumas. Relationship abuse, said Bryan, is nothing new, but Gen Z's willingness to talk about it has been a gamechanger.

"I think it's more that we have the language to talk about it," she told BI. "A lot of it was so normalized for such a long time. And I think now we're kind of like, 'this isn't OK.' We're going to talk about it so it doesn't happen to anyone else. We're kind of breaking the chain."