[Opinion. I’ve kissed dates I’ve known for fifteen minutes (maybe less!). If anything else happens to happen, I’m up for it (hehe). But a long, involved, passionate snogging session, maybe with a breast grab or cop a feel is…wonderful! What are those comfortable seats in the movies for anyway? Dontcha know when there’s consent? Ya want a lawyer & notary?!? Pretty sad…] I’ve been on plenty of dates – but nothing happened’: are we looking at the death of the kiss? Call it a crisis, call it a decline, call it a recession: the long, lusty snog is in trouble, harder to experience in real life or even watch on screen. But why? And what’s it like to think you may never lock lips with another? Elle Hunt The Guardian: 13 Aug 2026 SOURCE: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/aug/13/death-of-the-kiss-dating Spencer’s last kiss was two years ago, on a first date. It started off promisingly: after matching on Tinder, they met for a walk, then got drinks and ice-cream, before having dinner at her place. Finally, they kissed. “I didn’t like it,” says Spencer. He still struggles to identify why. “I found her attractive. There was chemistry, but something was lacking. There was nothing behind the kiss – it felt like a mechanical thing to do.” That wasn’t just Spencer’s most recent kiss – it was his first ever, at the age of 29. Now 31, he says a second kiss in some ways feels less possible than having sex: “The jump feels way bigger.” We are living through a crisis of intimacy: more people are reportedly single and having less sex. But behind those headlines there is a smaller but no less significant finding: we may also be in a kissing recession. In a recent YouGov survey, commissioned by oral care brand Waken, more than a third of British adults reported kissing romantically less often than they did five years ago. Nearly one in five hadn’t been kissed in more than a year, while 27% believed kissing is becoming less common. For gen Z in particular, self-consciousness may be a factor. The Waken survey found that those aged 18 to 24 fretted about the “right moment” for a kiss, and whether they might be bad at it. A third said they had avoided a kiss because they lacked confidence. This tallies with research consistently showing that young people today are more risk-averse than those in the past, abstaining not just from sex but also from alcohol and drugs. Though more pronounced in gen Z, this risk aversion – linked to less time spent face-to-face with friends – goes broader. “People are not talking to strangers, or asking each other on dates,” says Sarah Stein Lubrano, a social theorist who is writing a book about this “social atrophy”. Kissing is a telling example, because it makes use of skills such as reading facial expressions, body language and subtle social cues that may be getting rusty with our dependence on tech. Its reported decline should concern us all, Lubrano says, “not because everyone needs to be in romantic relationships, but because overall it means less social connection, less commitment, less belonging”. In these pornified times, first base scarcely registers. A 2022 study found that kissing was “significantly less prevalent” in male-female pornographic videos than in the typical experiences of American adults. Even romantic comedies might foreground sex over the “snog on the couch” leading up to it, Barclay points out. And while kissing may be glossed over publicly, privately the issue has become more fraught, with the #MeToo movement raising awareness of the importance of consent. Though a positive shift, this adds another layer of complexity and raises the stakes of misjudging the moment. “Now it can be, and is, seen as a harm,” Barclay says.
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