Sure that's only 43 times a day...
We've all just finished making New Year resolutions right?
Joining the gym, giving up smoking, finding a new hobby...these are your most common.
Having sex 16,000 times over the next 12-months? That would be an ambitious one.
But according to an opinion piece in The New York Times, if people just gave up just one thing, we'd have enough time on our hands to do the dirty 16,000 times in one year.
And that one thing is...our smartphones.
In the article Mr. Paul Greenberg, a fellow at the Safina Center, wrote:
''More than three-quarters of all Americans own a smartphone.
In 2018 those 253 million Americans spent $1,380 and 1,460 hours on their smartphone and other mobile devices.
That’s 91 waking days; cumulatively, that adds up to 370 billion waking American hours and $349 billion.''
Mr. Greenburg goes on to list a number of things we could be doing in 2019 instead of staring at our smartphone screens.
The list includes:
- Planting trees
- Reading
- Lobbying for voter reform
- Clearing our oceans from plastics
- Oh...and having obscene amounts of sex
Have you ever wondered how many times you could have sex in 1,460 hours? Well...if you read the headline (which you obviously did) it's 16,000 times - according to The Times.
How did they come to this conclusion? Well, their math is questionable...But this is how:
1,460 hours a year = 87,600 minutes. 87,600 minutes/5.4 minutes (the average “lovemaking session” duration, apparently) = 16,222.22 instances of sex a year.
Breaking that down to a daily level...across 365 days that equals having sex 43.8 times every day of the year.
Whether or not that's physically possible? We aren't medical professionals, but we seriously doubt our private parts would be up to the challenge.
If you gave up your smartphone for a year, you would have time to make love about 16,000 times https://t.co/RP5iIgIELg
— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) January 1, 2019
It's also important to note that these figures are for heterosexual love making sessions.
A 2014 study actually found that sessions between women in relationships with other women typically last between 30 and 45 minutes... and we highly doubt there's even enough minutes in the year to fit all that in.
In the original article, Mr. Greenburg wrote:
''A recent study of romantic relationships among college students in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture found that “smartphone dependency is significantly linked to relationship uncertainty” and that “partners’ perceived smartphone dependency predicts less relationship satisfaction.”
According to another recent study, more than 29 percent of Americans would rather give up sex for three months than give up their smartphone for a single week.
Now flip that around: If you gave up your device for a year, you would have time to make love about 16,000 times (assuming you’re like most Americans and your lovemaking sessions last an average of 5.4 minutes, not counting foreplay).
If all that sex doesn’t bring you and your partner closer, you could pay for about four hours of couples therapy. Not enough time? The renowned couples therapist Esther Perel has managed to fix some couples’ problems in three.''
While putting down our smartphones for longer periods is definitely a good idea...perhaps having sex isn't the best way to fill the spare time.
What were the other options again? Planting trees, sure let's just go with that one.
