“To me, there’s more intimacy with having someone there next to you that you can rely on without having to have sex,” she said.

“I don’t want to do anything that would harm the relationship and be something that we can’t come back from.” It’s a less sexy time to be young than it used to be, despite millennials’ reputation as bed-hoppers frolicking like the characters on “Girls.” A study published Tuesday in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior finds that younger millennials — born in the 1990s — are more than twice as likely to be sexually inactive in their early 20s as the previous generation was.

The researchers compared GSS data from two periods: The only significant difference is that a larger proportion of today’s young adults are celibate (then 10%, now 15%). The term "hook-up" may be new, but as far as getting it on is concerned, bed-hopping appears almost identical.

Today’s twenty-somethings are doing what today’s 45-year-olds did 20 years ago, and, as far as this 66-year-old can recall, what today’s retirees did 40 years ago. Media reports imply that hook-ups involve intercourse.

Other Fulani continue to depend on their livestock and have retained their own language, Fulfulde, and cultural autonomy.

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The trend may also reflect that women feel more empowered to say no, said Stephanie Coontz, director of research at the Council on Contemporary Families.

“As people have gotten much more accepting of all sorts of forms of consensual sex, they’ve also gotten more picky about what constitutes consent,” Coontz said.