What Google Searches Tell Us about Sex

By: American Decency Staff

I had been married for a few years when an engaged friend asked me about sex. She wondered if I had any advice for her wedding night or beyond. I told her two things. One, that sex is more wonderful than our culture ever admits. Two, that sex isn’t nearly as dramatic as our culture (including our own evangelical subculture) makes it out to be.

A new survey of Americans’ habits searching the internet for sex advice might just support my second point. Writing for the New York Times inSearching for Sex, Seth Stephens Davidowitz reports on some basics: Americans exaggerate the amount of sex they have in all contexts, within marriage, outside of marriage, with protection and without protection. He uses Google searches to evaluate the questions Americans are asking about sex, and he notes that most people—again, married or not— are searching for answers about why they don’t have more sex. Davidowitz thinks he has the answer:

Sex can be quite fun. Why do we have so little of it?

Google searches suggest one predominant reason: enormous anxiety, with much of it misplaced.

He goes on to detail the types of questions people ask of the ubiquitous search engine—questions about the size of their genitals (which, Davidowitz points out, might be better answered through a ruler than a computer), breasts, butts and waistlines, and about a host of potentially embarrassing moments and unpleasant odors during sex. In other words, we seem to be worried about the ordinariness of sex.

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