An ‘Intimacy Crisis’ Is Driving the Dating Divide

In the United States, almost half of adults are single. A quarter of men suffer from loneliness. Rates of depression are on the rise. And one in four Generation Z adults – the so-called naughtiest generation, according to a study – have never had sex with a partner.

In an age of endless connections, where relationships are a swipe away, and non-traditional relationship structures like polyamory are celebrated, why do people seem so disconnected and alone?

Chalk it up to changing social norms or changing generational attitudes about relationships. But the bigger issue at play, according to Justin Garcia, is that we simply don’t crave intimacy in the same way we used to. “Our species is on the brink of what I have come to think of as an intimacy crisis,” Garcia writes in his new book, The intimate animal: the science of sex, fidelity and why we die for love. Garcia suggests in the book that intimacy – not sex – is “the most powerful evolutionary motivator in modern relationships,” but that our thirst for intimacy “has been stifled and misdirected in today’s digital world.”

An evolutionary biologist and anthropologist who began his career studying hookup culture, Garcia is the executive director of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, a research lab known for its pioneering work on sexuality, online dating and aging. (Sex may actually improve with age, according to a recent report). He has held this position since 2019, and during that time he also served as Match’s chief science advisor, where he provides expertise for its annual Singles in America survey. In 2023, Indiana lawmakers voted to block public funding for the institute — state Sen. Lorissa Sweet, a Republican, falsely claimed that Kinsey was studying orgasms in minors — but, the following year, the school’s board of trustees voted to abandon plans to spin off the institute as a nonprofit.

Garcia’s book covers many areas—the “cognitive overload” of dating apps, why humans are programmed to be socially monogamous but not sexually monogamous, the science of breakups—but its common thread is that “even in this confusing age, when moments of human connection are becoming increasingly elusive, the search for intimacy remains the most human of human impulses.”

Recently on Zoom, I spoke with Garcia about the biggest misconception about the sexual recession among Gen Z, the attack on sexual literacy in today’s political climate, and why an AI chatbot won’t save your relationship. It’s all connected, he says.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

WIRED: What is the intimacy crisis and why, as you write in the book, are we on the verge of one?

Justin Garcia: We hear a lot about the loneliness epidemic. Research suggests that loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Psychological loneliness is embodied in physical and psychological health. At the same time, some reports suggest that the numbers have not increased much when it comes to psychological loneliness. But it is clear that its impact is greater and that more and more people are paying attention to it.

For me there is a bigger umbrella. We’re suddenly talking about loneliness, even though we’re all more connected than ever. That’s why I call it an intimacy crisis. We have more people at our disposal, especially through the Internet and social media platforms, but the depth of connections, the quality of connections, is not there.

You suggest that the intimacy crisis may lead to “unprecedented and serious biological consequences.” In what way?

We are in an age where the human brain takes in so much information and much of that information is threatening. This is what’s happening in the news, in Gaza and in Minnesota, with climate change, with the global economy – I mean, pick any article in the newspaper, it’s bad news. This takes a toll on our nervous system. Just as humans’ romantic and sexualized lives respond to environments in the way they form relational structures, they also respond to this current environment, in which many threats exist. When the nervous system prepares to respond to a threat, it is not conducive to social behavior and it is certainly not conducive to mating. If our nervous system detects threats from all of this in our environment, it has all kinds of effects on our relationships. And if we do not have the safety net of deep intimacy, we cannot weather these storms effectively.