AT COSMOPOLITAN, WE RESPECT THE SEX SCENE.

We watch them, we make lists of our favorites, we argue about which are hottest.

- By NICOLE PASULKA

We know what makes a scene scream and what makes us cringe (for example, that phone sex in And Just Like That...). We understand that a good one isn't just two attractive people hooking up; it's a chance to learn something about our own desires and intimacy itself.

To be clear, we're talking specifically about sex scenes in movies and on TV shows, and as perhaps the ultimate aficionados, we can tell you: They're going through a...moment. In 2023, research from the UCLA Center for Scholars and Storytellers prompted a flurry of internet conversation about young people's sinking appetite for onscreen sex (sensational headlines also used the study to proclaim that Gen Z is "turned off by sex" altogether, although the actual findings were much more nuanced, as we report to the right).

Then, the following year, data from analyst Stephen Follows published in The Economist showed that the volume of sexual content in movies has fallen nearly 40 percent since 2000, setting off a new round of think pieces. Some pundits theorize the latter is because explicit content has largely moved from theaters to streaming platforms. Others argue that our increasingly puritanical government's fight to ban pornography is seeping into big-screen entertainment.