People are not having sex as often as they used to and that has led researchers down a path to figure out why. Zoe Heller in The New Yorker: How Everyone Got So Lonely. “The suspicion remains that young people are not as delighted by sex as they once were. Speculation about why this might be so tends to reflect the hobbyhorse of the speculator. Some believe that poisons in our environment are playing havoc with hormones. Others blame high rates of depression and the drugs used to treat it. Still others contend that people are either sublimating their sexual desires in video games or exhausting them with pornography.”

Let’s see. Can anyone think of anything that has changed human behavior over the last couple decades during which we’ve noted the decline in sexual activity? Come on. We know exactly what it is. We didn’t stop getting off on getting it on. It’s not that we’re sick of sex, it’s just that we found something better: The internet. It’s fun, it’s addictive, it’s always available, it never has a headache. It’s like sex without the cleanup. We don’t even need to change into something more comfortable since we wear our pajamas all day long. It’s almost laughable that we’d even consider any other factor. We can’t walk across a busy intersection without staring at the internet. We used to make-out in the backseat of our cars, now we finger our phones while we’re driving. We used to go to Motels to spice up our intimacy. Now we won’t check in before we check out the WiFi speeds. Staring at your phone everywhere you go is the new public display of affection.

We play ignorant to this obvious and overwhelming factor driving our lowered sex drive because we don’t want to admit we’re participating in a never-ending tech orgy made up of twitchy, addicted, drones; slaves to the technology that we use all day for work and all night for fun. It’s the ultimate office romance that’s not only allowed, but encouraged. Your partner is always in the mood and going viral is a good thing. Having an emotional conflict? Just block the offender. Wanna break up? Just close your browser window, no hard feelings. And the taboo associated with being a sex addict disappears when you replace sex with the internet. Everyone is an internet addict.

“In 2018, nearly a quarter of Americans—the highest number ever recorded—reported having no sex in the past year.” I spent the entirety of 2018 boning up on online product research for things I didn’t need. Product research has become my most obsessive hobby. I prefer it to product use. Everyone can find their addiction online. But what about the romance? Tell Alexa to turn down the lights, open your laptop for mood lighting, hit play on Spotify’s Barry White compilation, and break out the selfie stick. No fuss, no muss, no baggage. Your iPad is not gonna ball you out for cheating on it with your laptop. And there are no postcoital requirements because the internet is the new sex and with the internet, you never stop coitaling (unless your WiFi goes down, which is why I have two broadband providers).