What Percent of People Masturbate? Stats by Age & Gender

Depending on the survey and the time frame it asks about, somewhere between half and three-quarters of adults report having masturbated, though the numbers split sharply along gender lines. A large, nationally representative U.S. survey found that roughly 60% of men had masturbated within the past month, compared with about 37% of women. Those figures only capture recent behavior; lifetime rates are higher, since many people who haven’t masturbated lately have done so at some earlier point. The real percentages are almost certainly higher still, because self-reported sexual behavior surveys consistently undercount stigmatized activities.

The Gender Gap in Adult Masturbation

The single most consistent finding across decades of sex research is that men report masturbating more often than women, and by a wide margin. In a nationally representative U.S. survey of adults aged 18 and older, about 60% of men said they had masturbated in the past month, while 36.5% of women said the same. The gap widens further when you look at who has never masturbated at all: roughly one in four women reported never having engaged in solo masturbation, compared with about one in ten men.¹

Those numbers don’t mean men are biologically wired to masturbate and women aren’t. Cultural messaging, shame, and the way people are socialized around their own bodies all shape whether someone tries masturbation in the first place, keeps doing it, and is willing to report it on a survey. Still, the gap appears across cultures, age groups, and time periods consistently enough that researchers treat it as one of the most robust findings in sexual behavior data.

Adolescent Rates and the Early Gender Split

The gender difference doesn’t emerge in adulthood; it’s already visible in the teenage years. A nationally representative U.S. study of adolescents found that among 14-year-old boys, about 63% had already masturbated. That figure climbed with each year of age, reaching roughly 73% at 15, 78% at 16, and 80% by age 17.²

Among girls, the trajectory looked different. At age 14, about 43% reported having masturbated, and that number stayed relatively flat through the mid-teen years before rising to around 58% at age 17.² The pattern is telling. Boys show a steep uptake between 14 and 15, then a gentler climb. Girls start lower, stay relatively stable through their mid-teens, and pick up later. By age 17, boys outnumber girls roughly 80% to 58%, a gap of more than 20 percentage points that persists, in various forms, throughout adulthood.

One important caveat with adolescent data: teens may be especially reluctant to disclose masturbation, even on anonymous surveys, because of embarrassment or uncertainty about social norms. The true numbers for both genders are likely higher than what shows up in the data.

What Happens in Later Life

Masturbation doesn’t disappear with age, though it does become less common. A study of older adults across four European countries found that between 41% and 65% of men reported masturbating in the preceding month, while 27% to 40% of women did the same.³ Those ranges varied by country, but the gender gap remained remarkably consistent everywhere the researchers looked.

These rates are lower than what you see in younger adults, which makes sense given changes in hormone levels, physical health, medication use, and relationship dynamics that accumulate over time. But the fact that a substantial share of older adults, often well past retirement age, still masturbate regularly pushes back against the assumption that sexual interest fades entirely with aging. For many people, solo sexual activity persists even when partnered sex becomes less frequent or stops altogether.

The U.S. nationally representative survey reinforced the age pattern more directly: after adjusting for other factors, younger participants were more likely to report both more recent and more frequent masturbation than older participants.⁴ The decline is gradual rather than cliff-like. There’s no age at which the numbers suddenly plummet.

Other Factors That Shift the Numbers

Gender and age get most of the attention, but they aren’t the only things predicting whether someone masturbates. The same nationally representative U.S. survey found that education, income, and sexual identity all independently predicted masturbation behavior after accounting for age and gender. People with more education and higher household incomes reported more recent and more frequent masturbation. Non-heterosexual individuals also reported higher rates than heterosexual individuals.⁴

The education and income findings probably reflect a mix of things. People with more education tend to have more liberal attitudes toward sexuality, are more likely to have encountered sex-positive messaging, and may feel less shame around disclosing masturbation on a survey. It’s harder to untangle whether they actually masturbate more or simply report it more freely. The sexual identity finding is easier to interpret: research has long shown that sexual minorities tend to explore their sexuality more broadly, including solo, and face fewer of the specific cultural taboos that discourage masturbation in some heterosexual contexts.

Relationship status matters too, though not always in the direction you’d expect. People in partnered relationships do masturbate, and the presence of a sexual partner doesn’t necessarily reduce solo sexual activity. Some people masturbate more when their partnered sex life is satisfying, not less. The relationship between partnered and solo sex is more complicated than a simple substitution model.

Why These Numbers Are Probably Undercounts

Every percentage cited above comes from self-report surveys, and self-report data on sexual behavior has a well-known blind spot: people tend to underreport behaviors they think might be judged negatively. Masturbation sits squarely in that territory. Despite shifts in cultural attitudes, it still carries stigma for many people, particularly for women, for older adults, and in religious or conservative communities.

Researchers who study survey methodology in the context of sex research have documented that social desirability, the tendency to present yourself in a favorable light, systematically distorts what people are willing to disclose about their sexual behavior.⁵ The effect isn’t random. It pushes disclosure down for stigmatized behaviors and up for socially approved ones. Since masturbation sits firmly in the stigmatized column for many respondents, the true prevalence is almost certainly higher than any survey captures.

This also means the gender gap may be partly an artifact. Women face stronger cultural pressure to minimize their sexual behavior on surveys. It’s plausible that the real difference between men and women is narrower than 60% versus 37%, though virtually no researcher thinks the gap disappears entirely. The direction of the difference holds across too many studies, methods, and cultures to be explained by reporting bias alone.

Motivations Look Different for Men and Women

The gender split isn’t only about how many people masturbate or how often. It extends to why. A systematic review examining masturbation as a coping strategy found that men were mainly motivated by physical release, reaching orgasm, and stress reduction, and they frequently used pornography during the activity. Women reported a broader and more varied set of motivations, including relaxation, better sleep, stress relief, and a sense of emotional closeness to themselves or a partner.⁶

This doesn’t mean men never masturbate for relaxation or that women never do it for physical release. It means the center of gravity for each group’s reported motivations tilts in different directions. The framing matters because it suggests masturbation serves different psychological functions depending on the person. For some, it’s primarily physical. For others, it functions more like a self-care routine, closer to taking a warm bath than to having sex.

The variety of motivations also helps explain why masturbation doesn’t neatly disappear when someone enters a sexual relationship. If part of the reason someone masturbates is to manage stress, improve sleep, or reconnect with their body, a satisfying partnered sex life doesn’t eliminate those needs. This is something couples sometimes misunderstand: one partner’s continued masturbation isn’t necessarily a reflection on the quality of the relationship.

How Cultural Context Shapes What Gets Reported

Cross-national data reveals just how much cultural background shifts the numbers. The European study of older adults found that masturbation rates varied substantially across the four countries studied, with monthly prevalence for men ranging from 41% in one country to 65% in another.³ That’s a wide spread for a behavior that’s presumably driven by similar biological urges everywhere. The variation is hard to explain without cultural attitudes playing a major role, both in actual behavior and in willingness to report it.

Religious upbringing, sexual education, media norms, and even the language a survey is written in can all move the needle. In cultures where masturbation is discussed openly and treated as normal, survey respondents report higher rates. In cultures where it’s framed as sinful or unhealthy, rates drop. It’s genuinely unclear how much of that drop reflects people actually masturbating less versus simply not admitting it.

This makes it almost impossible to pin down a single global percentage for “how many people masturbate.” The honest answer is that it depends heavily on who you ask, how you ask, and where. What the research does make clear is that masturbation is a majority behavior among adult men virtually everywhere it’s been studied, and a common behavior among adult women that varies more across cultures and demographics.

Frequency Versus Prevalence

Most discussions focus on whether people masturbate at all, but frequency adds an important layer. Among people who do masturbate, how often varies enormously. Some people masturbate daily or multiple times a day. Others might do it a few times a year. The same U.S. survey that found 60% of men had masturbated in the past month also showed significant variation in how often those men did so, with frequency being higher among younger, more educated, and non-heterosexual respondents.⁴

There’s no medically defined “normal” frequency. Clinical guidelines don’t specify a healthy range because masturbation frequency is driven by individual libido, life circumstances, relationship status, stress levels, and dozens of other factors. The concern threshold isn’t about frequency per se but about whether the behavior is causing distress, interfering with daily responsibilities, or replacing desired partnered intimacy against someone’s wishes. For the vast majority of people, whatever their frequency, masturbation falls well within the range of unremarkable human behavior.

Adolescent Data and the Question of Development

The adolescent figures are worth sitting with for a moment because they challenge a persistent misconception: the idea that masturbation is something teenagers “discover” at puberty and either grow out of or are taught to suppress. In reality, by age 14, a majority of boys and a substantial minority of girls have already masturbated, and the numbers only climb from there.²

The study also found that masturbation among adolescents was not associated with riskier partnered sexual behavior. This pushes back against a long-standing worry in some parenting and education circles that masturbation might “lead to” earlier or riskier sexual activity. The data suggest the opposite framing is more accurate: solo sexual exploration is a developmentally normal part of adolescence that exists largely independently of partnered sexual behavior.

For parents and educators, the practical implication is straightforward. The behavior is common enough that treating it as abnormal or alarming is at odds with the evidence. The more productive conversation, when one is needed, focuses on privacy, normalcy, and the distinction between healthy self-exploration and genuinely compulsive behavior, which is rare in this age group.

Masturbation in Long-Distance Relationships

One niche that researchers have started paying more attention to is masturbation as a deliberate strategy in long-distance relationships. A systematic review looking at this specific context found that people in long-distance relationships used masturbation not just for physical satisfaction but as a psychological coping tool, helping them manage the emotional strain of separation.⁶ The gendered pattern held here too: men leaned toward physical release motives while women reported using masturbation for relaxation, sleep, and maintaining a sense of sexual connection to their partner.

This research context is interesting because it reframes masturbation from a “substitute for real sex” into something more like an active relationship maintenance tool. In a world where remote work, military deployment, immigration, and long-distance dating are increasingly common, the ability to manage your own sexual and emotional needs solo isn’t a sign of deficiency. For many couples, it’s part of how the relationship survives separation. Some couples integrate it explicitly through mutual masturbation over video calls or shared erotic content, though the research on those specific practices is still thin.