At Bella’s Hacienda Ranch, a brothel on the outskirts of the rural Nevada truckstop town of Wells, a half-priced special for adult male virgins this May has gone off with a bang.

What may seem like a publicity stunt has compassion behind it. May is Mental Health Awareness Month in the US, and the brothel’s 74-year-old namesake owner and operator, Madam Bella Cummins, wants to raise awareness of what she describes as a “virginity epidemic”. She blames digital platforms supplanting young people’s in-person, “IRL” experiences, leading to stunted social development. Brothels, she argues, offer a safe space to work through resulting feelings of anxiety, shame and isolation.

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There is evidence that adult virginity and sexual inexperience are on the rise in the US, Canada and other western countries, according to Marie-Aude Boislard, director of the Canada Research Chair in developmental sexology. Approximately 15% of individuals born in the 1990s are virgins in their early 20s, the highest rate of sexual inactivity since 1985. Many report “difficult emotions” and interpersonal struggles due to social stigma, the dearth of visibility of sexual inexperience in adulthood and a lack of intimacy.