AceShowbiz - Andrew Callaghan is pointing the finger at Big Tech for what he calls Gen Z's "default to avoidance," diagnosing a generation-wide sex recession as a symptom of "profound hopelessness." In the latest episode of his documentary series Channel 5, the journalist and host argues that social media platforms are intentionally designed to make young people feel "fearful, insecure, and unwanted."

"Life is getting worse, and young people are tuned into that and responding to it in their own way, and how the fuck could we blame them?" says Chris Ryan, author of Sex at Dawn, who appears in the episode. Callaghan also interviews California Attorney General Rob Bonta following the $17 billion Meta settlement, and a viral intimacy coordinator cited by SNL.

"They lied to the world. They lied to parents. They lied to kids. They lied to Congress," Bonta says of Meta. "Meta and other social media companies [such as] TikTok, did research, they knew about the negative impacts that these features that they designed and deployed had on young people. They had data where they looked internally and they said, 'You know what? This is hurting kids' mental health.' But they doubled down on it instead of removing those features."

Callaghan frames the crisis in broader terms: "We feel as if deep down nothing is getting better and nothing will change for the better, and that these larger forces are moving us slowly toward annihilation." He adds, "It's the idea that every human interaction needs to be commodified for the sake of engagement. There's not one thing that you can do in your life that's better offline."

The episode also features an interview with Clavicular at Camp Looksmax, where Callaghan asks about connecting with a woman because you like her. "Where's the ROI in that?" Clavicular replies. "There's really not that many people worth interacting with."

Amanda, another interviewee, notes that the number of men aged 18-30 reporting zero sexual partners in the past year has tripled since the 2000s. "We are more connected, but we are never together," she says. "We see these trends with cancel culture on the internet, people getting dragged. We're all a little scared of rejection."

Channel 5 also reports from college spring breaks, Berlin's phone-free clubs, a "gooner vigil," and warns about robot sex doom. The episode is now available on the Channel 5 YouTube channel and Patreon, which has over 3.5 million subscribers and racked up 100 million views in the last year.