Everyone in Quarantine Was Masturbating for the Same Reason

There are a lot of valid reasons to masturbate — because you’re bored, because you can’t sleep, because you finally got all the Cheetos dust off of your fingers. Of course, during the height of the pandemic, most of us were masturbating because we weren’t sure if it was the end of the world and that was one way to go down swinging. 

At least, that’s what a new study has found, surprisingly not published in the journal of Stating the Obvious but rather the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Outside of pleasure and general horniness, which a majority of the 3,878 adults surveyed said was their main excuse for masturbating in quarantine, the underlying reason for all that COVID fapping was more or less stress relief. Specifically, 36.2 percent of women and 36.7 percent of men reported pleasuring themselves during those very lonely days and nights to relieve stress, with another 25.8 percent of women and 26.6 percent of men doing so to relax (which, you know, is pretty much the same thing).

Other predictable findings were that masturbation rates increased during the pandemic (again, what else were we supposed to do?), and that men had higher rates of masturbation compared to women. 

More largely, approximately 60 percent of men reported engaging in masturbation at least once in the last month compared to 36.5 percent of women, and about 36 percent of men and 9 percent of women reported masturbating at least once a week over the past year. On the complete flip side, roughly 25 percent of women reported never engaging in solo masturbation in their lifetime compared to just 10.4 percent of men. Women who didn’t masturbate cited reasons like a lack of interest or feeling insecure about their bodies, whereas men typically opted out because they were in committed relationships, preferred partnered sex, suffered from erectile problems, or most bleakly, had lost their spouse.

“Our findings add to a growing body of literature on solo masturbation,” the researchers concluded, adding that “our data may serve to mark a particular moment in time during the COVID-19 pandemic that subsequent researchers can use as a benchmark to understand ongoing shifts of solo and partnered sexual activities.”

Quarantine — it was a real wanker.