On July 28, 2026, dating app HUD and Australian sexual wellness retailer Girls Get Off released The 2026 Pleasure Census, an anonymous survey of 2,183 adults across 63 countries covering solo pleasure, communication, sex education and partnered intimacy. It is not a nationally representative sample — Mashable noted 68% of respondents were female, and the respondent pool skews toward the two brands' own audiences — but it is one of the larger self-reported pleasure datasets released this year, and the findings cut against the prevailing "sex recession" narrative in an interesting way.

Why It Matters

The industry has spent a decade solving for access — cheaper devices, mainstream shelf space, discreet shipping. This data suggests the binding constraint has moved. If three-quarters of an engaged audience already owns a toy and 80% still want more and better sex, the growth lever isn't another air-pulse SKU; it's communication, body image, and education. That is the pitch behind sex-ed platforms, intimacy-coaching apps, and the "connection cards" bundles brands keep shipping alongside hardware, and this survey is the closest thing they have to a market-sizing argument. It also lands a caution for the pleasure-tech category. If over half of Gen Z is spectatoring during solo sex, a product category built on aesthetic desirability and shareable design is arguably feeding the problem it claims to solve. The 1% figure for formal sex education is the quiet indictment underneath all of it: an entire industry is filling a vacuum left by public policy, and the survey's own respondents say they learned by trial and error. Treat the specific percentages as directional rather than definitive — self-selected, brand-recruited, female-skewed samples systematically overstate engagement. The relative gaps between groups are the durable part.

The headline: desire isn't down, disclosure is. Eighty percent of respondents said they aren't having as much sex as they'd ideally like (88% of men, 76% of women), while 79% engage in solo pleasure at least weekly and 29% do so daily. Nearly one in three said they don't tell a partner what they want because they don't want to "ruin the moment." Only 31% of women said they're very comfortable communicating what they want in bed, versus 44% of men. Sixteen percent of women reported orgasming every time with a partner against 39% of men, and 73% of women said they have faked one. "What surprised us wasn't that people want more and better sex, it was how many feel like they're figuring it out on their own," said Katie Dissanayake, HUD's director of community and user experience.

The most quoted finding was about self-surveillance. Fifty-four percent of Gen Z respondents said they catch themselves "performing" during solo pleasure — a phenomenon clinicians call spectatoring, watching yourself from the outside rather than feeling what's happening. Mashable's Anna Iovine reported the overall figure is even higher at 70%, with another 15% unsure. Seventy-three percent of Gen Z said appearance concerns often or sometimes get in the way of enjoying sex, versus 44% of respondents overall.

Two numbers should interest anyone selling into this market. Seventy-five percent of respondents own a vibrator, toy or other pleasure product — a penetration figure far above most general-population surveys, and a reminder of who answers a survey co-branded with a sex toy retailer. And the erotica split is stark: 29% of women use written content, books, erotica or fan fiction as part of solo pleasure versus 10% of men, while 28% of men watch porn daily versus 7% of women. Mainstream porn sites remain the single biggest source overall at 52%. On education, 60% said they learned about sex from personal experience and 17% from online content; formal sex ed accounted for 1%.

Sources

Update — 2026-07-31

{Initial entry — story first created.}