Only one in five high school boys in Japan say they have had their first kiss, the lowest figure ever recorded in a regular survey of youth sexuality.

The Japan Association for Sex Education (Jase) study has been conducted every six years since 1974.

High school girls are also modest, with 27.5 percent, or more than one in four, saying they’ve had their first kiss. But the decline among boys was much greater compared to the last survey.

The figures show how pandemic restrictions have affected the way young people in Japan express themselves sexually, experts say.

Fewer young Japanese are having sex, while more are masturbating, the study also showed.

The proportion of high school boys who say they’ve had sex has dropped 3.5 points since 2017 to 12 percent. For high school girls, it dropped by 5.3 points to 14.8%.

Although they are less active with partners, the survey found that masturbation is on the rise in all three demographics and is at record levels among high school girls and high school students overall.

Tokyo-based Jase surveyed 12,562 high school, junior high and university students in 2023 for its study.

School closures and restrictions on physical contact during the Covid pandemic likely affected many of these students because it happened “at a sensitive time when (they started) becoming interested in sexuality,” according to Yusuke Hayashi, a teacher of sociology at Musashi. University quoted in Mainichi newspaper.

The survey results come as Japan struggles to stem its declining birthrate and a growing sexlessness problem. A separate survey earlier this year found that almost half of marriages in Japan are sexless.

The country has the world’s oldest population, as measured by the UN as the proportion of people aged 65 or over.

At the end of 2023, Japan said this for the first time one in 10 people in the country is 80 or older.

In March, diaper maker Oji Holdings announced it would stop making baby diapers to focus on making diapers for adults.