
*A rare sexual fetish has become an increasingly popular choice among Gen Z’ers in the U.S., despite the dangerous consequences associated with it.
Madame Noire cites WebMD in its report, which reveals that despite some young adults and teens finding it pleasurable, sexual choking carries serious concerns from health experts.
The fetish, also known as sexual asphyxiation, centers on choking or strangling a partner to restrict that person’s airflow during sexual activity. Describing consequences for those experiencing sexual choking, WebMD mentioned a host of health issues that include trouble breathing, loss of consciousness, and memory problems.
“More alarmingly, cutting off the air supply to the brain can result in brain damage or even death,” Madame Noire noted, pointing out that “the pressure exerted on the neck during strangulation can damage blood vessels, reducing the oxygen reaching the brain, leading to irreversible brain damage or fatality.”
On another angle, WebMD mentioned autoerotic asphyxiation (aka choking during masturbation), which results in an estimated 250 to 1,000 deaths each year. The majority of cases related to masturbation and choking pertain to white men.

The risks are apparent, but that has not been a red flag for Gen Z young adults and teens, who practice kink without any regard.
A 2021 study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine reinforced the dangers of issuing a random survey examining sexual behaviors among undergraduate university students to assess the frequency of solo and partnered sexual activities and how often participants engaged in certain rough sex behaviors like light and hard spanking, choking, and slapping.
The study found that among participants with any partnered sexual experience, 43% had choked a partner, while 47.3% had experienced being choked.
A 2016 U.S. probability survey revealed that 21% of women and 11% of men aged 18 to 60 had experienced choking during sex, while 12% of women and 20% of men reported having choked a partner.
The prevalence of being choked during sex was nearly twice as high among adults under 40, highlighting a generational trend.

Digging deeper into the topic, Madame Noire brought in another study, one done in 2021 and published in the National Journal of Public Medicine.
That study mentioned how popular sexual choking has become among college women, finding that choking and strangulation during sex were particularly common among young women between the ages of 18 to 33.
Broken down, it revealed that 58% of college women had experienced choking during sex. From the findings, the study brought to light the fact that some women out the act “exciting” as they learned about choking from multiple sources, including pornography, erotic stories, magazines, social media, friends, and partners.
In an interview with the New York Post, Dr. Debby Herbenick, a public health professor at Indiana University, recommended that health experts should talk to young people about the risks associated with sexual asphyxiation.
“Sexual choking used to be extremely rare and now many young adults have engaged in it. In contrast, very few adults over 50 have ever been choked during sex,” Herbenick said, adding, that “Parents need to step into these conversations because choking is unlikely to be addressed in high school sex education, even though many teenagers are already engaging in it or may soon.”

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