Why Are Age Gap Romances Gen Z’s Biggest Taboo?

Words: Atlanta Tsiaoukkas

Make it stand out

Perversely intriguing, controversially erotic, intergenerational age gap relationships have become a constant source of online discourse and debate over the last few years. Physically mismatched couples have made entire careers from rage-bait content, video essayists comment on the problematic nature of any and all, real and fictional, age gap relationships, and we daily discover a new inappropriate partnership to cancel.

Intergenerational couplings are becoming increasingly synonymous with grooming and perversion, as we create new mathematics and biologies to explain why even the smallest age gaps are wrong. Yet, as we nitpick their morality, we also revel in their erotic potential, as exemplified by the onslaught of cinema focusing on these transgressive couples. How we engage with intergenerational relationships suggests we are turning the age gap into a new taboo, reflecting an unresolvable tension in our perceptions of youth and ageing. 

Whether you’re a ‘parents' rights’ activist scared drag queens will make your kids queer, or a BookToker horrified that a teen will read a little bit of smut, the average netizen is convinced that youth must be protected from the idea of sex for as long as possible. As long as possible increasingly means well into your twenties - backed by the popular myth that you suddenly become a ‘real' adult at twenty-five, the prize is a prefrontal cortex that, with no scientific support, means you can suddenly form real romantic and sexual relationships. 
___STEADY_PAYWALL___

There are a concerning number of Reddit threads suggesting that it would be morally reprehensible for someone in their late twenties to date another in their early twenties, based on junk science and an infantilising impulse against new adults. Our fearfulness of intergenerational relationships reflects underlying beliefs that youth is something to be indiscriminately protected, instead of twenty-somethings having the ability to take their lives into their own hands. 

Part of our extended childhood comes down to the fact that life stages are more segmented than ever: whilst a century ago the life of a teen would not look all that different to someone in their thirties or older, today, an age gap can reflect a radical difference in people’s circumstances, the spaces they occupy and the culture they consume. Intergenerational differences have become striking, and has led to people finding it hard to imagine that two individuals a generation apart could have anything to talk about - a phenomenon that, though people would like to chalk it up to universal prefrontal cortexes and maturity, is relatively new.

As a result, we are preoccupied with the minutiae of intergenerational difference, concerned that a prospective partner must have shared all the same life stages and experiences - to the point that a friend recently commented that the age difference between 28 and 31 was too big a gap for romance to fill. Even ‘POV: a gen z dating a millennial’ trends regularly, despite this often meaning only a couple of years difference. Exposing a market for exploiting relationship differences, turning them into taboos. 

“ Intergenerational differences have become striking, and has led to people finding it hard to imagine that two individuals a generation apart could have anything to talk about.”

The comment sections of these videos are full of generalisations - Gen Z have too many dreams to date a Millennial? A different taste in music is an ick? - that demonstrates that we’ve turned age into a stereotype that determines our romantic movements - the fact that dating apps allow us to search by age no doubt aids our age segregation. Much like the expectation of arbitrary biological markers of maturity, we seem to constantly search for rules to justify our romantic attractions, hellbent on explaining away erotics. 

Perhaps this impulse to sanitise sex is why we are so salaciously obsessed with those who transgress our neat relationship rules. Listicles of the biggest age gaps thrive, and a surefire way to get online attention is to start dating someone radically older or younger than you. Our media is full of age gap relationships, most recently 2025 releases Babygirl and Nosferatu, two sides of the same intergenerational coin. 

What thrusts many media depictions of age gap relationships is the erotics of pedagogy, the intimacies of discipline, dynamics that have long histories, particularly apparent in queer partnerships. Ancient pederasty lives on in the filmography of Luca Guadagnino with Call Me By Your Name and Queer; women are initiated into queerness by fashionable, sexually competent elders, preferably played by Cate Blanchett, where desire is something taught rather than instinctual. 

This pedagogical desire is at odds with cultural standards that people should be at the same life stages, mental capacities and knowledge as their prospective partners. We are convinced that you should never need to teach your partner - that would be invisible labour, gentle parenting your boyfriend - but we also live for the erotics of these educative moments. 

The politics of youth and age online are a mess of contradictions. Intergenerational anger is the perfect phenomena for rage-bait content farms and Hollywood cinema, and the erotics of the age gap seduction make the intergenerational relationship hard to avoid. 

Still, we are culturally confused about its place; thriving on media centring on it whilst decrying it as predatory in the comments section. A resolution would be an overhaul of how we view young adults: not as passive, sexless creatures, disturbing if sexualised, but as humans capable of erotic nuance.