We’re living through a strange moment in sexual history. We have more information about sex than ever before, more ways to explore it, and more products designed to help us figure out what feels good. And yet, when it comes to talking about pleasure with another person, plenty of us still struggle to find the words.
That’s one of the interesting threads emerging from The 2026 Pleasure Census, a global study from HUD App and our friends at Girls Get Off, exploring how people experience pleasure, intimacy, and modern dating.
We surveyed 2,183 adults across 63 countries, asking about everything from solo pleasure and sexual communication to porn, partnered sex, and the things that can get in the way of enjoying ourselves.
One of the clearest findings was how much people are investing in their own pleasure. Nearly four in five respondents, 79%, said they engage in solo pleasure at least weekly. Almost a third do so every day. Among Gen Z respondents, that weekly figure rises to 84%. That’s a lot of people getting to know themselves! And perhaps that’s not such a bad thing.
There’s still sometimes an assumption that solo pleasure is what people do when they aren’t having sex. But it can be much more than a substitute for partnered intimacy. It can be a way to explore your body, work out what you enjoy, experiment without pressure, or simply have a good time on your own terms and at your own pace.
That self-knowledge can be useful when you’re with someone else, too. It’s much easier to communicate what you want when you have some idea what that actually is. The catch is that knowing what you like and telling someone else about it are different skills.
The Pleasure Census found that nearly one in three respondents avoid telling a partner what they want because they don’t want to “ruin the moment”. So while we may be getting more comfortable exploring pleasure privately, that confidence doesn’t always make the journey into partnered sex.
Maybe that’s one of the bigger challenges facing modern intimacy? We’ve become very good at consuming information about sex, but information isn’t the same thing as confidence. You can know what a particular position is called, have watched a hundred videos about orgasms, and own every kind of pleasure product imaginable, and still find yourself going completely blank when your partner asks, “What do you like?”
There’s no shame in that. Talking about sex is a skill, and like any skill, it gets easier with practice. That might mean saying something small rather than delivering a perfectly articulated list of your desires. It might be telling someone when something feels good, asking them to slow down, suggesting something you’d like to try, or admitting that you’re not sure yet. Pleasure doesn’t have to be a performance, and neither does communicating about it.
The findings from The Pleasure Census suggest that people are curious about pleasure and increasingly interested in understanding themselves. The next step might be making it easier to take that knowledge into our relationships.
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