15 ms·

Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

82 points by elsewhen 6y ago

blakesterz 6y ago
The answers, from the abstract seem to be "young people" are living at home more, drinking less and gaming more than they used to. "Among young women, the decline in the frequency of drinking alcohol explains about one quarter of the drop in the propensity to have casual sex. Among young men, declines in drinking frequency, an increase in computer gaming, and the growing percentage who coreside with their parents all contribute significantly to the decline in casual sex."
- nlbrown 6y ago
  I'm quite surprised to see that the leading theories in many of these studies revolve around competing forms of entertainment. I'm personally more concerned with how economic difficulty, mental health, and hormonal imbalances could be causing these sort of changes in society.
  - estsauver 6y ago
    The study did examine economic difficulty. "The authors find no evidence that trends in young adults’ economic circumstances, internet use, or television watching explain the recent decline in casual sexual activity."
    - wittyreference 6y ago
      If they find no relationship between changing economic circumstances and the outcome, and but a positive relationship between likelihood of co-residence with parents and the outcome, the likelihood that they have made statistical blunders greatly outweighs the likelihood that changing economic circumstances do not play a role.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - watwut 6y ago
        Or, maybe poor people have about as much sex as rich ones when both live with parents.
      - Armisael16 6y ago
        When looking at any one variable they’re controlling for the others.
        hntrader 6y ago
        Living with your parents and facing economic difficulty are going to be correlated. If they're included together in a multivariable regression (which is often what people mean when they say "controlling for") then they're going to have multicollinearity and it's not possible to disambiguate the unique role of one versus the other. It's plausible that the former variable is "stealing" some of the statistical significance of the latter, leaving the researchers with the impression that the latter is irrelevant.
        Armisael16 6y ago
        Is that a statistical blunder? If economic circumstances provide no additional explanatory power beyond coresidence...
        hntrader 6y ago
        Not really, it's normal. If you have two independent variables that are highly correlated, and you include both into the model, it's going to be pretty arbitrary which one ends up with statistical significance. If we're dealing with weak effects and small data, there's very little one can do. That's why epidemiological studies like this kinda suck.
        deleted 6y ago
    - bopbeepboop 6y ago
      > the growing percentage who coreside with their parents all contribute significantly to the decline in casual sex > find no evidence that trends in young adults’ economic circumstances I... uh... can’t make sense of these two statements together, both of which seem quoted from the paper.
    - nerdponx 6y ago
      You would have to dig into the paper to find out what exactly that means. It might be that society is changing as a whole, and that individual variations of internet use don't contain any relevant information.
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    Well perhaps reality doesn’t agree with your assumptions?
  - jawns 6y ago
    The study talks about how more young people are residing with their parents because of economic difficulty, but I'm not sure that's necessarily a major factor in the decline. Many people become sexually active before they move out of their parents' houses, and although it might be more challenging to find a private space, where there's a will, there's a way. Teenagers have been sneaking around to fool around for generations, and I don't think teenagers and young people of today are any less adept at finding a way to shack up if they're sufficiently determined. So I think the focus is about what forces were not present in previous generations, and the Internet is certainly the most conspicuous factor. I'm not saying it's the decisive factor, but I'm not surprised it's a prime culprit.
    - wittyreference 6y ago
      The real earning power of minimum wage (aka, the standard teenage job) has declined by, what, 70% since the 70s? If it's more expensive, in real terms, to have a car, to rent a hotel room, to go out, then yes, it's going to be more difficult to get laid.
      - the_af 6y ago
        You can have sex while living with your parents, no car or hotel rooms needed. Not having money to go out might be a problem to meet people, true. Note that in many countries, teenagers owning cars (and related activities) are not as prevalent as in the US. When I was a teenager, almost nobody I knew owned a car, and we all used public transportation, so there was no (dating) car culture around this.
        PurpleFoxy 6y ago
        There is a difference between “you can” and “you will bother to when there are plenty of easier and equally enjoyable things to do.”
        the_af 6y ago
        I know I did bother. Sex is very interesting when you're a teenager. Like I said, other countries don't have the same car-centric culture of the US. We've been managing to successfully have sex -- and find sex interesting -- without such an early access to cars!
  - ovi256 6y ago
    This study does not address hormonal changes, but I'd like to see the secular testosterone decline studied. Testosterone directly mediates sexual desire, so that should play a role.
    - mywittyname 6y ago
      You can want to have sex, but not have an available partner.
    - Beaver117 6y ago
      I think this is the reason too. There could be many possible reasons why young men have less testosterone than their ancenstors. Maybe the high child obesity rates? Chemicals in foods?
      - ovi256 6y ago
        The high obesity rate is both caused and causing the lower testosterone. Endocrine disruptors (estrogen-like chemicals everywhere, not just in foods, originating from plastic manufacture, among others) are the biggest suspect IMO. They're probably causing both obesity and testosterone decline. It's an emerging topic of research with growing evidence. I think in a century we're going to be looked upon as barbarians by our ancestors for some of the things we did to our bodies, just as we look upon the earlier generations who leaded gasoline, or smoked pervasively.
  - hwbehrens 6y ago
    One of the cited works [0] did look at the relationship between mental health and sexual activity, if you're interested. They found that higher sexual activity correlated with greater levels of depression, especially in men. Sexually active women also correlated with decreases in mental health, but the authors' interpretation was that that decline primarily stems from higher rates of victimization among that population, which would obviously lead to negative mental outcomes. [0]: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10508-019-01482-3.pdf https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10508-019-014...
  - temp0826 6y ago
    There’s a joke here in South America when you see a family walking around with many children....”no television”
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    Boredom leads to sex. From that, it stands to reason that less boredom leads to less sex. And entertainment is a way to reduce boredom.
  - imbnwa 6y ago
    > I'm quite surprised to see that the leading theories in many of these studies revolve around competing forms of entertainment. Really? If there's anything Game of Thrones kept reminding us of, its that males find defeating/killing other men in battle (and the "in battle" part is important, human warfare is very ritualistic just like Chimpanzee warfare) and fucking women equivocal if not related activities. Our ape brains don't appear to make much difference between virtual and physical, at least not enough to make one a lot less addictive than the other.
- nerdponx 6y ago
  Personal anecdote: when I was single in a big city, I stayed at home playing games on Saturday because I had no social group with single people in it and no place to hang out other than a bar. Bar culture always sucked (and still sucks) and I wasn't pretty enough for Tinder. The music scene I was involved with was fading out and I wasn't part of the core clique anyway. Would I have liked to go out and meet people to have casual sex with? You bet I would have. But it was such a chore to even put myself in a position where such a thing was even a possibility (make new friends who hosted parties and invited single friends? go out and take nicer photos for a dating site?), that it seemed like it wasn't worth the effort. The flipside is that, while I was at a 4-year university with a nice campus, the setup for making connections for casual sex was a lot better. But I also was a lot more willing to put myself in weird grimy situations, so I don't know if it's a fair comparison. Moral: beware the direction of causality. Some people aren't having casual sex because they are gaming. Other people are gaming because they aren't having casual sex, whether it's by choice or for lack of opportunity.
  - the_only_law 6y ago
    Yeah I’m still trying to figure out how people even met pre dating apps. It’s not uncommon for me to go somewhere and be the youngest person in the room by a decade, everyone else around me married, etc.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      School, church, work, family, friends. Everyone in your network has their own network, and they can introduce you or you might meet someone at an event who is in their network.
    - seneca 6y ago
      > Yeah I’m still trying to figure out how people even met pre dating apps. We used to have civil-society. It facilitated a lot of these things. Read Robert Putnam's books and research if you're curious.
    - goatinaboat 6y ago
      Yeah I’m still trying to figure out how people even met pre dating apps. Introduced by a mutual friend is the traditional way.
nerdjon 6y ago
ok so I skimmed through the article to try to find information on where the data came from. Did I happen to miss this? Something I am curious about is the people they interviewed were they in more puritanical areas or did they gather data from a larger geographic area? Speaking from experience and discussions with my friends (obviously the last year does not count due to Covid)... this is the opposite if what I have seen regardless of gender, sexual orientation, and relationship status. Obviously something can be said for my friend circle likely having similar ideals that I have which makes it more complicated. That being said I am also in a big city.
shams93 6y ago
The key is more people forced to live with parents this doesn't just effect young people 78% of GenX are still forced to live at home. We have a society that is profoundly broken in so many ways.
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  > profoundly broken Well, it's different than they way it was when I grew up, but I don't know if kids living with their parents necessarily indicates a "broken" society: humans more or less lived that way for millenia successfully until around the time of the industrial revolution.
  - foobarian 6y ago
    And still do in most of the world outside of the lone-wolf United States.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- uses 6y ago
  Gen X is people born between '65 and '80. You're saying that 78% of people, presumably in the US, who are currently between 41 and 56 are living with their parents?
  - Fricken 6y ago
    52% of adults aged 18 to 29 live at home, the most since the great depression, according to this: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-live-with-their-parents-for-the-first-time-since-the-great-depression/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-...
    - Armisael16 6y ago
      What does that have to do with GenX?
marcodiego 6y ago
Entertainment and porn these days are more accessible and higher quality than they ever were.
- backtoyoujim 6y ago
  Great. Now all I can think about is the Matrix human pods playing the pornhub theme as they close.
  - metalliqaz 6y ago
    i'm all for it as long as it enables us to stop consuming every last drop of life on this planet
  - tluyben2 6y ago
    That seems quite likely for a Matrix like world though? If it gets better and better quality/experience with the end results holodecks/cortex plugs/etc and I can, without worrying about disease or money or dying or pregnancy in the virtual world, have 1000s of computer generated perfect mates doing whatever, would the vast majority of people still go outside or do anything meaningful at all? With gaming and porn and 'social' media we are already seeing some of that, but if it gets better, why would people do anything else?
  - imbnwa 6y ago
    What'd you think the killer app for Neuralink was gonna be? Just joking, of course
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      Are you? Arguably the biggest reason the internet wasn't just a fad was porn.
KaiserPro 6y ago
my wife frowns on my doing that.
- rkalla 6y ago
  I know you are going to get downvoted into oblivion (and me too for that matter) but this made me chuckle for _a while_ :)
underseacables 6y ago
I think it is due to the misconception of an over abundance of choice. The apps trick us into believing that there is always someone better at the next swipe. So instead of having random hook ups, it could be that people are always waiting for the perfect, and thus having less casual sex.
- newsclues 6y ago
  Dating apps suggest that a small group are having more sex and a larger group less sex. It’s the distribution of sex, not the amount. Technology has enabled the upper echelons of desirable men to sleep with many desirable women, and those down the pecking order are content with porn/toys, instead of settling for anyone other than the prized upper echelon. It’s not just the technology but the social change that resulted from technology
  - stonecraftwolf 6y ago
    It’s extremely telling that you don’t bother to consider this from a woman’s POV, as though sex is some sort of fungible good to be distributed amongst men rather than something that results from two or more people expressing their agency. This is a deeply toxic set of assumptions that has its roots in the deeply misogynistic Incel culture.
    - nickthemagicman 6y ago
      Everything viewed through statistics takes the emotion and human element out of it. This is statistically accurate analysis from dating sites and also the above article. It's not really something that's an opinion. Much like how Americans are Obese due to readily available junk food, women have become less interested in the less attractive men. Humans are more primitive than you would like to think.
      - goatinaboat 6y ago
        Americans are Obese due to readily available junk food, women have become less interested in the less attractive men Leading to headlines like http://whisper.sh/stories/09e9086b-03de-4087-ad5b-7f003ce2c312/Plus-Sized-Women-Admit-They-Arent-Attracted-To-Overweight-Men http://whisper.sh/stories/09e9086b-03de-4087-ad5b-7f003ce2c3... "Plus-Sized Women Admit They Aren't Attracted To Overweight Men"
fortran77 6y ago
I wonder if there's a connection to obesity, and the increase of obesity in young adults. See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5621592/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5621592/ > Not all social influences are positive, however, and overweight young adults in particular are susceptible to the negative effects of weight-related bias [76]. Data indicate that overweight young adults are judged by others to be less likable [77] and less suitable sexual partners [78]—even when those making judgments are overweight themselves [77, 79]. Further, perceived weight-related social control has been linked to body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, and infrequent physical activity among young adults, particularly when this social pressure to lose weight stems from their parents [80]. and: https://oatext.com/Adolescent-obesity-and-its-implications-for-sexual-health.php https://oatext.com/Adolescent-obesity-and-its-implications-f...
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  That makes me think of the Seinfeld episode where he says only 5% of the population is good looking and 95% are undate-able.
danhak 6y ago
We came of age in an era when HIV / AIDS was finally acknowledged and taken seriously by society, and recognized as something that could affect anybody. I think the attention placed on STDs during our Sex Ed classes may have something to do with it. Learning about the horrible things that could happen to you through casual sex (with grotesque accompanying photos!) was a major part of our curriculum. And we were taught that condoms may not protect you. So I think there is some innate fear and shame embedded here.
- nerdjon 6y ago
  I am going to push back on this one super hard. yes you should take STD's seriously but to use STD's as your reasoning for not having Casual Sex is the opposite of how you should be handling this. What we need is proper education about protection, risks, and just sex in general not making people afraid of sex! You could just as easily get an STD from the first time you have sex after a date as you could with Casual Sex.
  - danhak 6y ago
    I’m not suggesting that this fear is part of conscious reasoning.
    - nerdjon 6y ago
      I apologize, that is just how I read it and is something that I can get upset about pretty quickly. I have seen "sex ed" (in quotes because some places I would barely call it that), especially in the South, use STD's as a way to scare kids into not having sex which is so wrong.
  - KMag 6y ago
    > You could just as easily get an STD from the first time you have sex after a date as you could with Casual Sex. Maybe, but people willing to have casual sex with you are probably also more willing than the median person to have casual sex with other people, which probably means they're likely to have above median number of lifetime sexual partners. Unless you're arguing that lifetime risk of getting an STD is uncorrelated with the number of lifetime sexual partners, I wouldn't so quickly declare the two risks to be equal. Edit: I left the U.S. about a decade ago, and as I remember, they were considering allowing MSM to donate blood if they'd only had one partner in the past year. I was under the impression that was based on statistical risk modeling, but maybe it was plain old prudishness being dressed up in statistics. I still donate blood here, but I've lost track of US blood donation rules.
ars 6y ago
Historically causal sex was rare, and it could be that the recent increase in this was an aberration, and people are just going back to the way it used to be done. This line: "On the other hand, sexual inactivity may hinder young adults’ psychosocial development and diminish their physical and emotional gratification (Julian 2018)." is just bizzare. People have done without casual sex for most of human history, I think the young people will be just fine without it.
- steve_adams_86 6y ago
  Is there hard evidence that casual sex has been rare for all of human history? I know some cultures discourage it and some religions forbid it, but I also know that human beings love to have sex regardless of what’s good or reasonable or sensible. It’s hard to imagine us not doing it, if only hiding it better when society demands it.
  - watwut 6y ago
    A lot of casual sex before pill means a lot of babies out of wedlock. So, you can count prevalence of out out of wedlock babies to have estimate on hidden casual sex.
- imbnwa 6y ago
  Wrong. Warfare for most of human history was an opportunity for rape, sexual slavery, and pillaging valuables. That's the entire reason one stranger would be willing to risk their life for someone they absolutely have no relationship to. The vast Roman legions ran on the prospect of these outcomes. Only in the last 200 years or so, scoping to continental Europe, has it even been considered that warfare become an occassion for principled conduct with respect to civilians and private property.
  - mrkramer 6y ago
    > That's the entire reason one stranger would be willing to risk their life for someone they absolutely have no relationship to. People had to go to wars because you could get death penalty for treason (if you refuse to serve your empire, kingdom etc.) The things you are talking about were opportunistic, wars were always started by rulers motivated by expansionism and not by ordinary people motivated by greed and lust. And yea all wars had mercenaries but they were minority not majority of the army.
joshgoldman 6y ago
ZPG in full effect
nickthemagicman 6y ago
My theory, that no one wants to talk about, is that dating apps have sped up hypergamy. (Note: talking statistically on a population level..this is not every person) Before an average guy used to be able to get a date without a problem, but now the bar is set much higher for a male, due to quick and easy access for women to dates via technology. (This in reverse applies to men less so because men are polygamous not hypergamous by nature and by definition are the pursuers and have less standards.). So there's less casual sex as a whole because a small group of people are having more casual sex. This is evidenced by stats from the above article and by numerous studies on dating sites that shows a small pool of men having much more success with women. Also, anecdotally as an admittedly non Brad Pitt average guy.. if you've ever compared your dating apps to an average woman friend...it's insane the contrast. Much like the economy that is also bifurcating and has a shrinking middle class... this reflected on the dating market as well.
- viklove 6y ago
  Lots of people have talked about these issues, but society's response has been to drive those people away and label them "misogynists" for observing what has happened in the sexual marketplace. A lot of the ideas you talk about are openly discussed in Red Pill/Incel communities, and you know how much everyone hates those groups. Red Pill is the group of men who understand hypergamy and actively try to elevate themselves to be the "highest value" males so they can benefit from it. Incels are the group of men who have tried to honestly attract members of the other sex, but continuous failure has lead them to a state of despair to the point where they withdraw completely and instead focus on things that actually make them happy like video games. But even by mentioning those two groups, this comment is likely to get downvoted and I'm likely to be labeled as a misogynist for considering that they might be right about some things.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    Copernicus was labelled a heretic for saying the Earth revolved around the sun. But science proved him right. Science seems to make people uncomfortable because it lifts the delusion that humans are way further from animals than we actually are. Humans are formed in the image of GOD! And the universe revolves around us! Not only does science show that the solar system does not revolve around humans, but also shows that men and women have primitive instincts on the dating market to maximize their genetic success...just like animals. Polygyny, or the harem strategy, is the most successful mating strategy throughout all the mammalian class. One strong male with a group of females. And this pattern is seen repeated throughout many species of mammals. The harsh truth is that as a male mammal, this is the framework you have to work in. Not being blessed with family resources, or natural good looks, or natural talent, or the ability to make a a baby, makes one disposable by default and having to fight for reproductive success. There's exceptions to the rule but statistically it seems to be sound. I don't know why people deny this. They simply have to compare the average guys Tinder to the average girls Tinder to see this mating selection in action. Women and movie stars can literally get casual sex at the push of a button. People like to delude themselves that theyre better people than they really are I guess. Then they cheat on their spouse with a swimsuit model or a lawyer.
ceilingcorner 6y ago
No mention of any cultural shifts or changing attitudes, as if young people having casual sex was just the natural state of civilization and not something that became celebrated and artificially encouraged via the media in the last half-century. Tinder and other online dating options are pretty bleak and inherently extractive in nature, so I find it equally plausible that many young people are simply turned off from the whole thing.
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  Young people having casual sex is the natural state of not just civilization, but the entire human species.
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago
    No, not really. The modern western form of treating sex primarily as an entertainment activity is very much a new thing. Previously we had marriage and other cultural practices that aimed to channel these forces in productive directions. Now we just have PornHub and Tinder.
    - metalliqaz 6y ago
      And certainly there was no such thing as backroom abortions, bastard sons, and the world's oldest profession, right?
      - ceilingcorner 6y ago
        All of those things occurred at much smaller percentages than they do today. Abortions especially. They also weren’t seen as the primary purpose of sex. Today, if you say something like “Sex is important and should only be done between people that are getting married, since it correlates with lower divorce rates”, most people will think you’re strange.
        metalliqaz 6y ago
orange_tee 6y ago
The idea that casual sex serves as some sort of formative process sounds ridiculous. In my mind, sex serves an important role in pair bonding, and casual sex would then inhibit the ability of people to pair bond.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  This is old wisdom, perpetually forgotten, recently remembered anew.
  - marton78 6y ago
    Therefore, not perpetually forgotten.
    - ceilingcorner 6y ago
      Let’s say it’s frequently buried by one generation and subsequently dug up by another one, decades later.
  - covidthrow3 6y ago
    This is not old wisdom coming back, it's the dynamics of casual sex changing through dating and hook up apps.
- scoutt 6y ago
  What if pair bonding is part of the formative process?
- zepto 6y ago
  Totally agreed. Relationships are hard. Leading how to do them well means having relationships. Casual sex for a limited time window is good for learning more about sex, but if you don’t shift to investing in relationship building, you may not learn those skills before it is too late.
throwaway8581 6y ago
Many comments are ignoring the most important aspect. The decline is almost all among men not women: >Using a slightly different age range and time frame, Ueda et al. (2020) found that the percentage of sexually inactive men ages 18 to 24 increased from 18.9 percent in 2000–2002 to 30.9 percent in 2016–2018, and the percentage of sexually inactive young women increased from 15.1 percent to 19.1 percent over the same period. The big increase is sexually inactive men and that is because women can more easily find highly attractive men on Tinder and other apps. The bottom of the male market has just fallen out completely. At least when you had to go to a bar as an unattractive guy, you could be the only one available or could woo women through other qualities. Now it’s 6 feet tall and fit with a good face or you get swiped left. And the high status men are more than happy to sleep with multiple women in a single week.
- metalliqaz 6y ago
  you sound bitter
  - sawmurai 6y ago
    Who said OP is in the inactive bucket? ;)
    - metalliqaz 6y ago
      call it a hunch ;)
      - throwaway8581 6y ago
        I'm married. I'm just capable of sympathizing with single young men and, even more importantly, of seeing the negative effects the end of monogamy is going to have on our society.
        quacked 6y ago
        It is quite bizarre that any criticism of modern sexual economics is immediately met with "ha, bet you're not getting any!" I have become convinced that these people do not have a great deal of insight into the true private lives of the people they know, and that shallow understanding of their cohort forms a platform of belief with which they're repeating their platitudes and banalities.
BlueTie 6y ago
"Disrupting" a space too often means creating a shitty, tokenized, empty version of it that's so easy it replaces the more difficult and nuanced real thing. I can't imagine a better world where sex is a pornhub search and socialization is a gaming PC - but it looks like that's the path we're on.
- metalliqaz 6y ago
  people suck. embrace your inner misanthrope and avoid them as much as possible
quacked 6y ago
Modern casual sexual encounters are assessed purely on subjective ratings of the opposite party's sexual attractiveness (secondary sexual characteristics, behavior, social status, etc.). Furthermore, constant saturation into the full range of these behaviors and characteristics across humanity through the internet and dating applications creates a endless "could I get a better mate?" feedback loop in the minds of both men and women. You're no longer competing within a social group, you're competing within every social group. Notice that the per the article, the population of "sexless" men has grown nearly three times as much as the population of sexless women. Fewer men are having more sex; it's practically on-demand for them, and they are usually tremendous specimens when compared to other men. If you are not aware of this, I would bet that you do not know any men who are on the "winning" side of the new dating economy. If you do know men like this and you disagree with me, please elaborate. I have heard a great deal of insight into "the dating market" ranging from the perspective of attractive athletes (both male and female) to the perspective of unattractive nerds (both male and female) and this pattern is clearly visible through their stories. The women tend to retreat from casual sex because they don't want it (and not only because the pickings are subjectively slim, but also because the expectations for them to 'put out' are very high); the men tend to retreat from casual sex because they can't have it.
- cashewchoo 6y ago
  One thing I'm deeply thankful for is that I was engaged coming out of college to the woman of my dreams, and that Tinder didn't really fully catch on until I was already seriously dating my now-wife. The modern dating market sounds like one of the most depressing aspects of modern adult society.
  - quacked 6y ago
    It is an absolute nightmare and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Modern "dating" is frightening, dehumanizing, demoralizing, ahistorical, amoral, and devoid of meaning.
    - durnygbur 6y ago
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
Internet 2D is easier
liquidify 6y ago
>>>"the growing percentage who coreside with their parents all contribute significantly to the decline in casual sex. The authors find no evidence that trends in young adults’ economic circumstances, ... explain the recent decline in casual sexual activity." Is the author suggesting that increased co-residence is not related to economic circumstances?
klmadfejno 6y ago
> Between 2007 and 2017, more young women became employed, but there was no significant change in their mean earnings, and their total debt load actually declined significantly. Young men’s employment, earnings, and debt did not change significantly between 2007 and 2017. Both women and men became significantly more likely to live with their parents. This sounds odd. More women are employed but mean earnings didn't change? Debt of young people has declined in the past decade? Despite this they're more likely to live with their parents? I'm in the camp of expecting financial independence being the strongest factor in this trend personally.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
perardi 6y ago
Is there any reputable study or sources for the amount of casual sex among young homosexual men? Because, anecdotally: plenty of casual sex.
- scarmig 6y ago
  As a bisexual guy, I will throw in a second confirming anecdote. Theories of sex decreasing because of men being left out of the economy, the secular decrease in testosterone, men being addicted to video games and porn, etc. have to grapple with the likelihood that casual sex hasn't decreased among men-who-have-sex-with-men but rather increased. If that were confirmed, then why are men-who-have-sex-with-women in particular not having sex?
  - WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
    The answer could be that women are just choosing better men in the apps and just becoming the 13th girl in his roster.
    - jjj1232 6y ago
      Can we stop using verbiage like “better” men? Attractiveness isn’t a linear scale from 1-10, and it’s harmful to perpetuate that myth. It’s multi dimensional and unique to each person.
      - WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
        By "better" I mean some magical quality that makes them better than others.
  - bradlys 6y ago
    Consider the standards of a gay man and consider the standards of a straight woman. You might find they differ. Also, I tend to find that gay men are more attractive than straight men.
durnygbur 6y ago
What is sex? I remember studying abroad in Europe around 2010 and browsing dating websites from desperation, apparently my character, appearance, status, and ethnicity combined into attractivenes of zero. Hadn't even imagined that apps will be created which will turn the desperation in an absolute vacuum, vacuum trying to suck out the money from me with subscriptions.
DC1350 6y ago
The obvious reason is that in a perfectly efficient sexual market the biggest stud has sex with all the women. Most men are unattractive so they don’t get to participate in casual sex. Instagram and Tinder mean there’s no such thing as just settling with what’s available anymore.
FreshFries 6y ago
Lack of anonymity, is according to this one random person with loads of "good old times" experience and plenty of insights in the current "20 to 25 years old scene", the most important reason. Where up to 10 years ago one could meet people and exchange kisses without even considering exchanging phone numbers, that is now not even an option anymore. With the exchange of telno/FB/Insta, instantly there is no more "casual" relation, you are traceable and identifiable. One nightstands turn in to creepy ghosting or stalking really fast. EDIT: completion of a sentence.
zeryx 6y ago
My thought; not a scientist and this is all conjecture, but a potential other cause than what other folks are mentioning: Consent conversations and alcohol can be quite confusing and scary to navigate now. This seems to suggest to me, that people are just not putting themselves in situations where casual sex might be more possible (alcohol + parties, etc) due to the fear of it being labelled as rape.
- ziml77 6y ago
  This was my guess too. I have nothing to back it up, but there's definitely a fear for some people of being labelled a rapist. Unfortunately it's also a fear that gets dismissed because people say that "false rape" claims don't happen or that it's nothing compared to the real rape claims that get brushed off as false.
- SwiftyBug 6y ago
  I'd go even further and suggest that men are now more self-conscious about merely approaching women, even on appropriate places and occasions, because they don't want to come off as a harasser.
hardwaresofton 6y ago
Is there not a glaring contradiction in the findings (based on the abstract)? > Among young men, declines in drinking frequency, an increase in computer gaming, and the growing percentage who coreside with their parents all contribute significantly to the decline in casual sex. > The authors find no evidence that trends in young adults’ economic circumstances, internet use, or television watching explain the recent decline in casual sexual activity. Seems like co-residing with parents and declining drinking frequency (which I'd think of as just more care-free behavior) is a direct result of trends in economic circumstances. And in the paper, they lay out some pretty good hypothesis: > Many youth now work multiple jobs as part of the gig economic (Katz and Krueger 2019), which in turn might limit the amount of time available for casual sexual encounters (Lyons et al. 2014). High levels of debt, particularly student loan debt, might also lead to increased work hours and thus constrain the time available for engaging in casual sex. Of course, this is what they set out to test, but it seems like they do find something to suggest that it's true, as it contributes to 10%: > As shown in model 4, young men who live with their parents are significantly less likely than their counterparts who live independently to report having had casual sex in the past month, and controlling for parent coresidence reduces the coefficient for survey year from –.073 to –.067. > The estimated odds that young men who live with their parents engage in casual sex are only 63 percent of the corresponding odds for young men who live independently (e−.457 = .63) Co-residence and not being financially stable seem pretty tightly correlated to me. Feels like they're missing the forest for the trees -- you know what you do when you're not making enough money? Live with your parents, Stay in and maybe play video games instead of going to the pub and trying to impress and woo someone of the opposite sex.
taxicabjesus 6y ago
I had to have a 'birds and the bees' talk with a young female passenger one night. I titled that post "the difference between boys and girls": https://www.taxiwars.org/2016/02/the-difference-between-boys-girls.html https://www.taxiwars.org/2016/02/the-difference-between-boys... This young woman was flexible about casual sex, and didn't understand why her latest boyfriend was troubled that it'd only been 2 weeks since her last boyfriend. I told my passenger how women fundamentally get to choose who they have sex with (to screen their suitors), whereas men 'get lucky'. The evolutionary reason is that women have all the consequences of a pregnancy. I also have an un-posted collection of anecdotes about "the predicaments of girls and boys", about women who were dissatisfied with their relationships. Women have to screen, but aren't trained in how to motivate their romantic interests to behave up to their standards. From the submission: > One of the strongest predictors of the likelihood of engaging in casual sex is alcohol consumption. [...] Because there is some evidence that alcohol consumption increases young women’s more than young men’s odds of engaging in casual sex, it is possible that the decline in alcohol consumption explains more of the decline in young women’s than in young men’s propensity to have sex outside of a committed romantic relationship. Alcohol consumption is rather important to help women suppress their naturally-protective inclinations to avoid 'hooking up' with any man who expresses an interest in them. Other female passengers, whom I'm still in touch with, have told me of how they were very selective in their relationships...
- seneca 6y ago
  This post reads as an advertisement for a blog. While you may have something interesting to say, I find this difficult to engage with.
dukeofdoom 6y ago
I read about this before I think it was on OKCupid study. The spoils go to the top. In the sexual market place, the top 20% of best/successful looking men, get most of the women on the dating apps. Leaving the hand as the best companion for the rest. Hence why Onlyfans is a billion dollar business. Pareto distribution at play again. Also I read somewhere that only about 50% of men that have lived ever reproduced. And in societies with an unequal distribution, eventually devolves into being more violent. As the "incels", try to better their lot for reproduction.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  > 50% of men that have lived ever reproduced. I found something similar: https://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/is-there-anything-good-about-men-and-other-tricky-questions/#:~:text=Citing%20recent%20DNA%20research%2C%20Dr,40%20percent%20of%20men%20did https://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/is-there-any....
  - mrkramer 6y ago
    Off the top of my head reason would be wars. Millions of young men throughout the history died young and never had the chance to have family.
- Dirlewanger 6y ago
  A decade ago, OKCupid used to be half-way decent application . You actually heard about people meeting/getting married on there. Now that all the big dating applications are owned by the same company, and they all copy Tinder, it's practically worthless.
clydethefrog 6y ago
So it seems the stereotype of gamers and people that dislikes parties seems to be true. Nothing new. The men having to coreside with their parents seems to be an economic problem of our time though. Time to expand the 40 billion love hotel market to the US? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_hotel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_hotel
deleted 6y ago
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krallistic 6y ago
"Among young men [...] and the growing percentage who coreside with their parents all contribute significantly to the decline in casual sex. The authors find no evidence that trends in young adults’ economic circumstances, [..] explain the recent decline in casual sexual activity." Isnt the increase in coreside with parents due to economic circumstances...?
GoodJokes 6y ago
If you get off the apps and focus on real life encounters in group spaces y’all will feel a lot better about not being “specimens.” All the specimens I know are deeply unhappy despite the sex because they are basically treated like meat by woman. And it is ok to treat men like that.
kar5pt 6y ago
I dont understand how you can consider the causes of women and men having less sex to be separate. Most people are heterosexual, if something causes women to have less sex, that will also cause men to have less sex since they'll be less likely to find women to have sex with (and vice versa).
- seneca 6y ago
  You're assuming a 1 to 1 relationship, which isn't the case. A minority of men have sex with many women, and many men have sex with no women.
ruined 6y ago
well we've built a national cybernetic state of drug prohibition, parallel construction dragnets, security cameras, and omnipresent militarized police, so nobody can party. we've retarded emotional development so nobody knows how to be interesting, and censored/surveilled all media that young people use so nobody can talk to each other. we've normalized excessive parental control into adulthood and crippled everyone economically, so there's no place to go. now nobody can fuck except rich people and broke ass queers who never gave a damn anyway. the straights really done it to themselves
airhead969 6y ago
Greater population, increased competition for fewer resources/jobs, more stress about the future/less hope, more people living in dense/anonymous cities, more mobility, more distractions, less community, less IRL communication and socialization in general, worse social skills, overworked parents didn't teach them how to interact with others properly, extended adolescence, and more Hikikomori. People don't have sex when they're depressed, overweight, never go outside, and play video games all day.

82 points by elsewhen 6y ago

The answers, from the abstract seem to be "young people" are living at home more, drinking less and gaming more than they used to. "Among young women, the decline in the frequency of drinking alcohol explains about one quarter of the drop in the propensity to have casual sex. Among young men, declines in drinking frequency, an increase in computer gaming, and the growing percentage who coreside with their parents all contribute significantly to the decline in casual sex."

nlbrown 6y ago
I'm quite surprised to see that the leading theories in many of these studies revolve around competing forms of entertainment. I'm personally more concerned with how economic difficulty, mental health, and hormonal imbalances could be causing these sort of changes in society.
- estsauver 6y ago
  The study did examine economic difficulty. "The authors find no evidence that trends in young adults’ economic circumstances, internet use, or television watching explain the recent decline in casual sexual activity."
  - wittyreference 6y ago
    If they find no relationship between changing economic circumstances and the outcome, and but a positive relationship between likelihood of co-residence with parents and the outcome, the likelihood that they have made statistical blunders greatly outweighs the likelihood that changing economic circumstances do not play a role.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - watwut 6y ago
      Or, maybe poor people have about as much sex as rich ones when both live with parents.
    - Armisael16 6y ago
      When looking at any one variable they’re controlling for the others.
      - hntrader 6y ago
        Living with your parents and facing economic difficulty are going to be correlated. If they're included together in a multivariable regression (which is often what people mean when they say "controlling for") then they're going to have multicollinearity and it's not possible to disambiguate the unique role of one versus the other. It's plausible that the former variable is "stealing" some of the statistical significance of the latter, leaving the researchers with the impression that the latter is irrelevant.
        Armisael16 6y ago
        Is that a statistical blunder? If economic circumstances provide no additional explanatory power beyond coresidence...
        hntrader 6y ago
        Not really, it's normal. If you have two independent variables that are highly correlated, and you include both into the model, it's going to be pretty arbitrary which one ends up with statistical significance. If we're dealing with weak effects and small data, there's very little one can do. That's why epidemiological studies like this kinda suck.
        deleted 6y ago
  - bopbeepboop 6y ago
    > the growing percentage who coreside with their parents all contribute significantly to the decline in casual sex > find no evidence that trends in young adults’ economic circumstances I... uh... can’t make sense of these two statements together, both of which seem quoted from the paper.
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    You would have to dig into the paper to find out what exactly that means. It might be that society is changing as a whole, and that individual variations of internet use don't contain any relevant information.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  Well perhaps reality doesn’t agree with your assumptions?
- jawns 6y ago
  The study talks about how more young people are residing with their parents because of economic difficulty, but I'm not sure that's necessarily a major factor in the decline. Many people become sexually active before they move out of their parents' houses, and although it might be more challenging to find a private space, where there's a will, there's a way. Teenagers have been sneaking around to fool around for generations, and I don't think teenagers and young people of today are any less adept at finding a way to shack up if they're sufficiently determined. So I think the focus is about what forces were not present in previous generations, and the Internet is certainly the most conspicuous factor. I'm not saying it's the decisive factor, but I'm not surprised it's a prime culprit.
  - wittyreference 6y ago
    The real earning power of minimum wage (aka, the standard teenage job) has declined by, what, 70% since the 70s? If it's more expensive, in real terms, to have a car, to rent a hotel room, to go out, then yes, it's going to be more difficult to get laid.
    - the_af 6y ago
      You can have sex while living with your parents, no car or hotel rooms needed. Not having money to go out might be a problem to meet people, true. Note that in many countries, teenagers owning cars (and related activities) are not as prevalent as in the US. When I was a teenager, almost nobody I knew owned a car, and we all used public transportation, so there was no (dating) car culture around this.
      - PurpleFoxy 6y ago
        There is a difference between “you can” and “you will bother to when there are plenty of easier and equally enjoyable things to do.”
        the_af 6y ago
        I know I did bother. Sex is very interesting when you're a teenager. Like I said, other countries don't have the same car-centric culture of the US. We've been managing to successfully have sex -- and find sex interesting -- without such an early access to cars!
- ovi256 6y ago
  This study does not address hormonal changes, but I'd like to see the secular testosterone decline studied. Testosterone directly mediates sexual desire, so that should play a role.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    You can want to have sex, but not have an available partner.
  - Beaver117 6y ago
    I think this is the reason too. There could be many possible reasons why young men have less testosterone than their ancenstors. Maybe the high child obesity rates? Chemicals in foods?
    - ovi256 6y ago
      The high obesity rate is both caused and causing the lower testosterone. Endocrine disruptors (estrogen-like chemicals everywhere, not just in foods, originating from plastic manufacture, among others) are the biggest suspect IMO. They're probably causing both obesity and testosterone decline. It's an emerging topic of research with growing evidence. I think in a century we're going to be looked upon as barbarians by our ancestors for some of the things we did to our bodies, just as we look upon the earlier generations who leaded gasoline, or smoked pervasively.
- hwbehrens 6y ago
  One of the cited works [0] did look at the relationship between mental health and sexual activity, if you're interested. They found that higher sexual activity correlated with greater levels of depression, especially in men. Sexually active women also correlated with decreases in mental health, but the authors' interpretation was that that decline primarily stems from higher rates of victimization among that population, which would obviously lead to negative mental outcomes. [0]: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10508-019-01482-3.pdf https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10508-019-014...
- temp0826 6y ago
  There’s a joke here in South America when you see a family walking around with many children....”no television”
- mywittyname 6y ago
  Boredom leads to sex. From that, it stands to reason that less boredom leads to less sex. And entertainment is a way to reduce boredom.
- imbnwa 6y ago
  > I'm quite surprised to see that the leading theories in many of these studies revolve around competing forms of entertainment. Really? If there's anything Game of Thrones kept reminding us of, its that males find defeating/killing other men in battle (and the "in battle" part is important, human warfare is very ritualistic just like Chimpanzee warfare) and fucking women equivocal if not related activities. Our ape brains don't appear to make much difference between virtual and physical, at least not enough to make one a lot less addictive than the other.
nerdponx 6y ago
Personal anecdote: when I was single in a big city, I stayed at home playing games on Saturday because I had no social group with single people in it and no place to hang out other than a bar. Bar culture always sucked (and still sucks) and I wasn't pretty enough for Tinder. The music scene I was involved with was fading out and I wasn't part of the core clique anyway. Would I have liked to go out and meet people to have casual sex with? You bet I would have. But it was such a chore to even put myself in a position where such a thing was even a possibility (make new friends who hosted parties and invited single friends? go out and take nicer photos for a dating site?), that it seemed like it wasn't worth the effort. The flipside is that, while I was at a 4-year university with a nice campus, the setup for making connections for casual sex was a lot better. But I also was a lot more willing to put myself in weird grimy situations, so I don't know if it's a fair comparison. Moral: beware the direction of causality. Some people aren't having casual sex because they are gaming. Other people are gaming because they aren't having casual sex, whether it's by choice or for lack of opportunity.
- the_only_law 6y ago
  Yeah I’m still trying to figure out how people even met pre dating apps. It’s not uncommon for me to go somewhere and be the youngest person in the room by a decade, everyone else around me married, etc.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    School, church, work, family, friends. Everyone in your network has their own network, and they can introduce you or you might meet someone at an event who is in their network.
  - seneca 6y ago
    > Yeah I’m still trying to figure out how people even met pre dating apps. We used to have civil-society. It facilitated a lot of these things. Read Robert Putnam's books and research if you're curious.
  - goatinaboat 6y ago
    Yeah I’m still trying to figure out how people even met pre dating apps. Introduced by a mutual friend is the traditional way.

nerdjon 6y ago

ok so I skimmed through the article to try to find information on where the data came from. Did I happen to miss this? Something I am curious about is the people they interviewed were they in more puritanical areas or did they gather data from a larger geographic area? Speaking from experience and discussions with my friends (obviously the last year does not count due to Covid)... this is the opposite if what I have seen regardless of gender, sexual orientation, and relationship status. Obviously something can be said for my friend circle likely having similar ideals that I have which makes it more complicated. That being said I am also in a big city.

shams93 6y ago

The key is more people forced to live with parents this doesn't just effect young people 78% of GenX are still forced to live at home. We have a society that is profoundly broken in so many ways.

commandlinefan 6y ago
> profoundly broken Well, it's different than they way it was when I grew up, but I don't know if kids living with their parents necessarily indicates a "broken" society: humans more or less lived that way for millenia successfully until around the time of the industrial revolution.
- foobarian 6y ago
  And still do in most of the world outside of the lone-wolf United States.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
uses 6y ago
Gen X is people born between '65 and '80. You're saying that 78% of people, presumably in the US, who are currently between 41 and 56 are living with their parents?
- Fricken 6y ago
  52% of adults aged 18 to 29 live at home, the most since the great depression, according to this: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-live-with-their-parents-for-the-first-time-since-the-great-depression/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-...
  - Armisael16 6y ago
    What does that have to do with GenX?

marcodiego 6y ago

Entertainment and porn these days are more accessible and higher quality than they ever were.

backtoyoujim 6y ago
Great. Now all I can think about is the Matrix human pods playing the pornhub theme as they close.
- metalliqaz 6y ago
  i'm all for it as long as it enables us to stop consuming every last drop of life on this planet
- tluyben2 6y ago
  That seems quite likely for a Matrix like world though? If it gets better and better quality/experience with the end results holodecks/cortex plugs/etc and I can, without worrying about disease or money or dying or pregnancy in the virtual world, have 1000s of computer generated perfect mates doing whatever, would the vast majority of people still go outside or do anything meaningful at all? With gaming and porn and 'social' media we are already seeing some of that, but if it gets better, why would people do anything else?
- imbnwa 6y ago
  What'd you think the killer app for Neuralink was gonna be? Just joking, of course
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    Are you? Arguably the biggest reason the internet wasn't just a fad was porn.

KaiserPro 6y ago

my wife frowns on my doing that.

rkalla 6y ago
I know you are going to get downvoted into oblivion (and me too for that matter) but this made me chuckle for _a while_ :)

underseacables 6y ago

I think it is due to the misconception of an over abundance of choice. The apps trick us into believing that there is always someone better at the next swipe. So instead of having random hook ups, it could be that people are always waiting for the perfect, and thus having less casual sex.

newsclues 6y ago
Dating apps suggest that a small group are having more sex and a larger group less sex. It’s the distribution of sex, not the amount. Technology has enabled the upper echelons of desirable men to sleep with many desirable women, and those down the pecking order are content with porn/toys, instead of settling for anyone other than the prized upper echelon. It’s not just the technology but the social change that resulted from technology
- stonecraftwolf 6y ago
  It’s extremely telling that you don’t bother to consider this from a woman’s POV, as though sex is some sort of fungible good to be distributed amongst men rather than something that results from two or more people expressing their agency. This is a deeply toxic set of assumptions that has its roots in the deeply misogynistic Incel culture.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    Everything viewed through statistics takes the emotion and human element out of it. This is statistically accurate analysis from dating sites and also the above article. It's not really something that's an opinion. Much like how Americans are Obese due to readily available junk food, women have become less interested in the less attractive men. Humans are more primitive than you would like to think.
    - goatinaboat 6y ago
      Americans are Obese due to readily available junk food, women have become less interested in the less attractive men Leading to headlines like http://whisper.sh/stories/09e9086b-03de-4087-ad5b-7f003ce2c312/Plus-Sized-Women-Admit-They-Arent-Attracted-To-Overweight-Men http://whisper.sh/stories/09e9086b-03de-4087-ad5b-7f003ce2c3... "Plus-Sized Women Admit They Aren't Attracted To Overweight Men"

fortran77 6y ago

I wonder if there's a connection to obesity, and the increase of obesity in young adults. See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5621592/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5621592/ > Not all social influences are positive, however, and overweight young adults in particular are susceptible to the negative effects of weight-related bias [76]. Data indicate that overweight young adults are judged by others to be less likable [77] and less suitable sexual partners [78]—even when those making judgments are overweight themselves [77, 79]. Further, perceived weight-related social control has been linked to body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, and infrequent physical activity among young adults, particularly when this social pressure to lose weight stems from their parents [80]. and: https://oatext.com/Adolescent-obesity-and-its-implications-for-sexual-health.php https://oatext.com/Adolescent-obesity-and-its-implications-f...

lotsofpulp 6y ago
That makes me think of the Seinfeld episode where he says only 5% of the population is good looking and 95% are undate-able.

danhak 6y ago

We came of age in an era when HIV / AIDS was finally acknowledged and taken seriously by society, and recognized as something that could affect anybody. I think the attention placed on STDs during our Sex Ed classes may have something to do with it. Learning about the horrible things that could happen to you through casual sex (with grotesque accompanying photos!) was a major part of our curriculum. And we were taught that condoms may not protect you. So I think there is some innate fear and shame embedded here.

nerdjon 6y ago
I am going to push back on this one super hard. yes you should take STD's seriously but to use STD's as your reasoning for not having Casual Sex is the opposite of how you should be handling this. What we need is proper education about protection, risks, and just sex in general not making people afraid of sex! You could just as easily get an STD from the first time you have sex after a date as you could with Casual Sex.
- danhak 6y ago
  I’m not suggesting that this fear is part of conscious reasoning.
  - nerdjon 6y ago
    I apologize, that is just how I read it and is something that I can get upset about pretty quickly. I have seen "sex ed" (in quotes because some places I would barely call it that), especially in the South, use STD's as a way to scare kids into not having sex which is so wrong.
- KMag 6y ago
  > You could just as easily get an STD from the first time you have sex after a date as you could with Casual Sex. Maybe, but people willing to have casual sex with you are probably also more willing than the median person to have casual sex with other people, which probably means they're likely to have above median number of lifetime sexual partners. Unless you're arguing that lifetime risk of getting an STD is uncorrelated with the number of lifetime sexual partners, I wouldn't so quickly declare the two risks to be equal. Edit: I left the U.S. about a decade ago, and as I remember, they were considering allowing MSM to donate blood if they'd only had one partner in the past year. I was under the impression that was based on statistical risk modeling, but maybe it was plain old prudishness being dressed up in statistics. I still donate blood here, but I've lost track of US blood donation rules.

ars 6y ago

Historically causal sex was rare, and it could be that the recent increase in this was an aberration, and people are just going back to the way it used to be done. This line: "On the other hand, sexual inactivity may hinder young adults’ psychosocial development and diminish their physical and emotional gratification (Julian 2018)." is just bizzare. People have done without casual sex for most of human history, I think the young people will be just fine without it.

steve_adams_86 6y ago
Is there hard evidence that casual sex has been rare for all of human history? I know some cultures discourage it and some religions forbid it, but I also know that human beings love to have sex regardless of what’s good or reasonable or sensible. It’s hard to imagine us not doing it, if only hiding it better when society demands it.
- watwut 6y ago
  A lot of casual sex before pill means a lot of babies out of wedlock. So, you can count prevalence of out out of wedlock babies to have estimate on hidden casual sex.
imbnwa 6y ago
Wrong. Warfare for most of human history was an opportunity for rape, sexual slavery, and pillaging valuables. That's the entire reason one stranger would be willing to risk their life for someone they absolutely have no relationship to. The vast Roman legions ran on the prospect of these outcomes. Only in the last 200 years or so, scoping to continental Europe, has it even been considered that warfare become an occassion for principled conduct with respect to civilians and private property.
- mrkramer 6y ago
  > That's the entire reason one stranger would be willing to risk their life for someone they absolutely have no relationship to. People had to go to wars because you could get death penalty for treason (if you refuse to serve your empire, kingdom etc.) The things you are talking about were opportunistic, wars were always started by rulers motivated by expansionism and not by ordinary people motivated by greed and lust. And yea all wars had mercenaries but they were minority not majority of the army.

joshgoldman 6y ago

ZPG in full effect

nickthemagicman 6y ago

My theory, that no one wants to talk about, is that dating apps have sped up hypergamy. (Note: talking statistically on a population level..this is not every person) Before an average guy used to be able to get a date without a problem, but now the bar is set much higher for a male, due to quick and easy access for women to dates via technology. (This in reverse applies to men less so because men are polygamous not hypergamous by nature and by definition are the pursuers and have less standards.). So there's less casual sex as a whole because a small group of people are having more casual sex. This is evidenced by stats from the above article and by numerous studies on dating sites that shows a small pool of men having much more success with women. Also, anecdotally as an admittedly non Brad Pitt average guy.. if you've ever compared your dating apps to an average woman friend...it's insane the contrast. Much like the economy that is also bifurcating and has a shrinking middle class... this reflected on the dating market as well.

viklove 6y ago
Lots of people have talked about these issues, but society's response has been to drive those people away and label them "misogynists" for observing what has happened in the sexual marketplace. A lot of the ideas you talk about are openly discussed in Red Pill/Incel communities, and you know how much everyone hates those groups. Red Pill is the group of men who understand hypergamy and actively try to elevate themselves to be the "highest value" males so they can benefit from it. Incels are the group of men who have tried to honestly attract members of the other sex, but continuous failure has lead them to a state of despair to the point where they withdraw completely and instead focus on things that actually make them happy like video games. But even by mentioning those two groups, this comment is likely to get downvoted and I'm likely to be labeled as a misogynist for considering that they might be right about some things.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  Copernicus was labelled a heretic for saying the Earth revolved around the sun. But science proved him right. Science seems to make people uncomfortable because it lifts the delusion that humans are way further from animals than we actually are. Humans are formed in the image of GOD! And the universe revolves around us! Not only does science show that the solar system does not revolve around humans, but also shows that men and women have primitive instincts on the dating market to maximize their genetic success...just like animals. Polygyny, or the harem strategy, is the most successful mating strategy throughout all the mammalian class. One strong male with a group of females. And this pattern is seen repeated throughout many species of mammals. The harsh truth is that as a male mammal, this is the framework you have to work in. Not being blessed with family resources, or natural good looks, or natural talent, or the ability to make a a baby, makes one disposable by default and having to fight for reproductive success. There's exceptions to the rule but statistically it seems to be sound. I don't know why people deny this. They simply have to compare the average guys Tinder to the average girls Tinder to see this mating selection in action. Women and movie stars can literally get casual sex at the push of a button. People like to delude themselves that theyre better people than they really are I guess. Then they cheat on their spouse with a swimsuit model or a lawyer.

ceilingcorner 6y ago

No mention of any cultural shifts or changing attitudes, as if young people having casual sex was just the natural state of civilization and not something that became celebrated and artificially encouraged via the media in the last half-century. Tinder and other online dating options are pretty bleak and inherently extractive in nature, so I find it equally plausible that many young people are simply turned off from the whole thing.

bpodgursky 6y ago
Young people having casual sex is the natural state of not just civilization, but the entire human species.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  No, not really. The modern western form of treating sex primarily as an entertainment activity is very much a new thing. Previously we had marriage and other cultural practices that aimed to channel these forces in productive directions. Now we just have PornHub and Tinder.
  - metalliqaz 6y ago
    And certainly there was no such thing as backroom abortions, bastard sons, and the world's oldest profession, right?
    - ceilingcorner 6y ago
      All of those things occurred at much smaller percentages than they do today. Abortions especially. They also weren’t seen as the primary purpose of sex. Today, if you say something like “Sex is important and should only be done between people that are getting married, since it correlates with lower divorce rates”, most people will think you’re strange.
      - metalliqaz 6y ago

orange_tee 6y ago

The idea that casual sex serves as some sort of formative process sounds ridiculous. In my mind, sex serves an important role in pair bonding, and casual sex would then inhibit the ability of people to pair bond.

ceilingcorner 6y ago
This is old wisdom, perpetually forgotten, recently remembered anew.
- marton78 6y ago
  Therefore, not perpetually forgotten.
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago
    Let’s say it’s frequently buried by one generation and subsequently dug up by another one, decades later.
- covidthrow3 6y ago
  This is not old wisdom coming back, it's the dynamics of casual sex changing through dating and hook up apps.
scoutt 6y ago
What if pair bonding is part of the formative process?
zepto 6y ago
Totally agreed. Relationships are hard. Leading how to do them well means having relationships. Casual sex for a limited time window is good for learning more about sex, but if you don’t shift to investing in relationship building, you may not learn those skills before it is too late.

throwaway8581 6y ago

Many comments are ignoring the most important aspect. The decline is almost all among men not women: >Using a slightly different age range and time frame, Ueda et al. (2020) found that the percentage of sexually inactive men ages 18 to 24 increased from 18.9 percent in 2000–2002 to 30.9 percent in 2016–2018, and the percentage of sexually inactive young women increased from 15.1 percent to 19.1 percent over the same period. The big increase is sexually inactive men and that is because women can more easily find highly attractive men on Tinder and other apps. The bottom of the male market has just fallen out completely. At least when you had to go to a bar as an unattractive guy, you could be the only one available or could woo women through other qualities. Now it’s 6 feet tall and fit with a good face or you get swiped left. And the high status men are more than happy to sleep with multiple women in a single week.

metalliqaz 6y ago
you sound bitter
- sawmurai 6y ago
  Who said OP is in the inactive bucket? ;)
  - metalliqaz 6y ago
    call it a hunch ;)
    - throwaway8581 6y ago
      I'm married. I'm just capable of sympathizing with single young men and, even more importantly, of seeing the negative effects the end of monogamy is going to have on our society.
      - quacked 6y ago
        It is quite bizarre that any criticism of modern sexual economics is immediately met with "ha, bet you're not getting any!" I have become convinced that these people do not have a great deal of insight into the true private lives of the people they know, and that shallow understanding of their cohort forms a platform of belief with which they're repeating their platitudes and banalities.

BlueTie 6y ago

"Disrupting" a space too often means creating a shitty, tokenized, empty version of it that's so easy it replaces the more difficult and nuanced real thing. I can't imagine a better world where sex is a pornhub search and socialization is a gaming PC - but it looks like that's the path we're on.

metalliqaz 6y ago
people suck. embrace your inner misanthrope and avoid them as much as possible

quacked 6y ago

Modern casual sexual encounters are assessed purely on subjective ratings of the opposite party's sexual attractiveness (secondary sexual characteristics, behavior, social status, etc.). Furthermore, constant saturation into the full range of these behaviors and characteristics across humanity through the internet and dating applications creates a endless "could I get a better mate?" feedback loop in the minds of both men and women. You're no longer competing within a social group, you're competing within every social group. Notice that the per the article, the population of "sexless" men has grown nearly three times as much as the population of sexless women. Fewer men are having more sex; it's practically on-demand for them, and they are usually tremendous specimens when compared to other men. If you are not aware of this, I would bet that you do not know any men who are on the "winning" side of the new dating economy. If you do know men like this and you disagree with me, please elaborate. I have heard a great deal of insight into "the dating market" ranging from the perspective of attractive athletes (both male and female) to the perspective of unattractive nerds (both male and female) and this pattern is clearly visible through their stories. The women tend to retreat from casual sex because they don't want it (and not only because the pickings are subjectively slim, but also because the expectations for them to 'put out' are very high); the men tend to retreat from casual sex because they can't have it.

cashewchoo 6y ago
One thing I'm deeply thankful for is that I was engaged coming out of college to the woman of my dreams, and that Tinder didn't really fully catch on until I was already seriously dating my now-wife. The modern dating market sounds like one of the most depressing aspects of modern adult society.
- quacked 6y ago
  It is an absolute nightmare and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Modern "dating" is frightening, dehumanizing, demoralizing, ahistorical, amoral, and devoid of meaning.
  - durnygbur 6y ago

NikolaeVarius 6y ago

Internet 2D is easier

liquidify 6y ago

>>>"the growing percentage who coreside with their parents all contribute significantly to the decline in casual sex. The authors find no evidence that trends in young adults’ economic circumstances, ... explain the recent decline in casual sexual activity." Is the author suggesting that increased co-residence is not related to economic circumstances?

klmadfejno 6y ago

> Between 2007 and 2017, more young women became employed, but there was no significant change in their mean earnings, and their total debt load actually declined significantly. Young men’s employment, earnings, and debt did not change significantly between 2007 and 2017. Both women and men became significantly more likely to live with their parents. This sounds odd. More women are employed but mean earnings didn't change? Debt of young people has declined in the past decade? Despite this they're more likely to live with their parents? I'm in the camp of expecting financial independence being the strongest factor in this trend personally.

deleted 6y ago

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perardi 6y ago

Is there any reputable study or sources for the amount of casual sex among young homosexual men? Because, anecdotally: plenty of casual sex.

scarmig 6y ago
As a bisexual guy, I will throw in a second confirming anecdote. Theories of sex decreasing because of men being left out of the economy, the secular decrease in testosterone, men being addicted to video games and porn, etc. have to grapple with the likelihood that casual sex hasn't decreased among men-who-have-sex-with-men but rather increased. If that were confirmed, then why are men-who-have-sex-with-women in particular not having sex?
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  The answer could be that women are just choosing better men in the apps and just becoming the 13th girl in his roster.
  - jjj1232 6y ago
    Can we stop using verbiage like “better” men? Attractiveness isn’t a linear scale from 1-10, and it’s harmful to perpetuate that myth. It’s multi dimensional and unique to each person.
    - WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
      By "better" I mean some magical quality that makes them better than others.
- bradlys 6y ago
  Consider the standards of a gay man and consider the standards of a straight woman. You might find they differ. Also, I tend to find that gay men are more attractive than straight men.

durnygbur 6y ago

What is sex? I remember studying abroad in Europe around 2010 and browsing dating websites from desperation, apparently my character, appearance, status, and ethnicity combined into attractivenes of zero. Hadn't even imagined that apps will be created which will turn the desperation in an absolute vacuum, vacuum trying to suck out the money from me with subscriptions.

DC1350 6y ago

The obvious reason is that in a perfectly efficient sexual market the biggest stud has sex with all the women. Most men are unattractive so they don’t get to participate in casual sex. Instagram and Tinder mean there’s no such thing as just settling with what’s available anymore.

FreshFries 6y ago

Lack of anonymity, is according to this one random person with loads of "good old times" experience and plenty of insights in the current "20 to 25 years old scene", the most important reason. Where up to 10 years ago one could meet people and exchange kisses without even considering exchanging phone numbers, that is now not even an option anymore. With the exchange of telno/FB/Insta, instantly there is no more "casual" relation, you are traceable and identifiable. One nightstands turn in to creepy ghosting or stalking really fast. EDIT: completion of a sentence.

zeryx 6y ago

My thought; not a scientist and this is all conjecture, but a potential other cause than what other folks are mentioning: Consent conversations and alcohol can be quite confusing and scary to navigate now. This seems to suggest to me, that people are just not putting themselves in situations where casual sex might be more possible (alcohol + parties, etc) due to the fear of it being labelled as rape.

ziml77 6y ago
This was my guess too. I have nothing to back it up, but there's definitely a fear for some people of being labelled a rapist. Unfortunately it's also a fear that gets dismissed because people say that "false rape" claims don't happen or that it's nothing compared to the real rape claims that get brushed off as false.
SwiftyBug 6y ago
I'd go even further and suggest that men are now more self-conscious about merely approaching women, even on appropriate places and occasions, because they don't want to come off as a harasser.

hardwaresofton 6y ago

Is there not a glaring contradiction in the findings (based on the abstract)? > Among young men, declines in drinking frequency, an increase in computer gaming, and the growing percentage who coreside with their parents all contribute significantly to the decline in casual sex. > The authors find no evidence that trends in young adults’ economic circumstances, internet use, or television watching explain the recent decline in casual sexual activity. Seems like co-residing with parents and declining drinking frequency (which I'd think of as just more care-free behavior) is a direct result of trends in economic circumstances. And in the paper, they lay out some pretty good hypothesis: > Many youth now work multiple jobs as part of the gig economic (Katz and Krueger 2019), which in turn might limit the amount of time available for casual sexual encounters (Lyons et al. 2014). High levels of debt, particularly student loan debt, might also lead to increased work hours and thus constrain the time available for engaging in casual sex. Of course, this is what they set out to test, but it seems like they do find something to suggest that it's true, as it contributes to 10%: > As shown in model 4, young men who live with their parents are significantly less likely than their counterparts who live independently to report having had casual sex in the past month, and controlling for parent coresidence reduces the coefficient for survey year from –.073 to –.067. > The estimated odds that young men who live with their parents engage in casual sex are only 63 percent of the corresponding odds for young men who live independently (e−.457 = .63) Co-residence and not being financially stable seem pretty tightly correlated to me. Feels like they're missing the forest for the trees -- you know what you do when you're not making enough money? Live with your parents, Stay in and maybe play video games instead of going to the pub and trying to impress and woo someone of the opposite sex.

taxicabjesus 6y ago

I had to have a 'birds and the bees' talk with a young female passenger one night. I titled that post "the difference between boys and girls": https://www.taxiwars.org/2016/02/the-difference-between-boys-girls.html https://www.taxiwars.org/2016/02/the-difference-between-boys... This young woman was flexible about casual sex, and didn't understand why her latest boyfriend was troubled that it'd only been 2 weeks since her last boyfriend. I told my passenger how women fundamentally get to choose who they have sex with (to screen their suitors), whereas men 'get lucky'. The evolutionary reason is that women have all the consequences of a pregnancy. I also have an un-posted collection of anecdotes about "the predicaments of girls and boys", about women who were dissatisfied with their relationships. Women have to screen, but aren't trained in how to motivate their romantic interests to behave up to their standards. From the submission: > One of the strongest predictors of the likelihood of engaging in casual sex is alcohol consumption. [...] Because there is some evidence that alcohol consumption increases young women’s more than young men’s odds of engaging in casual sex, it is possible that the decline in alcohol consumption explains more of the decline in young women’s than in young men’s propensity to have sex outside of a committed romantic relationship. Alcohol consumption is rather important to help women suppress their naturally-protective inclinations to avoid 'hooking up' with any man who expresses an interest in them. Other female passengers, whom I'm still in touch with, have told me of how they were very selective in their relationships...

seneca 6y ago
This post reads as an advertisement for a blog. While you may have something interesting to say, I find this difficult to engage with.

dukeofdoom 6y ago

I read about this before I think it was on OKCupid study. The spoils go to the top. In the sexual market place, the top 20% of best/successful looking men, get most of the women on the dating apps. Leaving the hand as the best companion for the rest. Hence why Onlyfans is a billion dollar business. Pareto distribution at play again. Also I read somewhere that only about 50% of men that have lived ever reproduced. And in societies with an unequal distribution, eventually devolves into being more violent. As the "incels", try to better their lot for reproduction.

MattGaiser 6y ago
> 50% of men that have lived ever reproduced. I found something similar: https://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/is-there-anything-good-about-men-and-other-tricky-questions/#:~:text=Citing%20recent%20DNA%20research%2C%20Dr,40%20percent%20of%20men%20did https://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/is-there-any....
- mrkramer 6y ago
  Off the top of my head reason would be wars. Millions of young men throughout the history died young and never had the chance to have family.
Dirlewanger 6y ago
A decade ago, OKCupid used to be half-way decent application . You actually heard about people meeting/getting married on there. Now that all the big dating applications are owned by the same company, and they all copy Tinder, it's practically worthless.

clydethefrog 6y ago

So it seems the stereotype of gamers and people that dislikes parties seems to be true. Nothing new. The men having to coreside with their parents seems to be an economic problem of our time though. Time to expand the 40 billion love hotel market to the US? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_hotel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_hotel

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

krallistic 6y ago

"Among young men [...] and the growing percentage who coreside with their parents all contribute significantly to the decline in casual sex. The authors find no evidence that trends in young adults’ economic circumstances, [..] explain the recent decline in casual sexual activity." Isnt the increase in coreside with parents due to economic circumstances...?

GoodJokes 6y ago

If you get off the apps and focus on real life encounters in group spaces y’all will feel a lot better about not being “specimens.” All the specimens I know are deeply unhappy despite the sex because they are basically treated like meat by woman. And it is ok to treat men like that.

kar5pt 6y ago

I dont understand how you can consider the causes of women and men having less sex to be separate. Most people are heterosexual, if something causes women to have less sex, that will also cause men to have less sex since they'll be less likely to find women to have sex with (and vice versa).

seneca 6y ago
You're assuming a 1 to 1 relationship, which isn't the case. A minority of men have sex with many women, and many men have sex with no women.

ruined 6y ago

well we've built a national cybernetic state of drug prohibition, parallel construction dragnets, security cameras, and omnipresent militarized police, so nobody can party. we've retarded emotional development so nobody knows how to be interesting, and censored/surveilled all media that young people use so nobody can talk to each other. we've normalized excessive parental control into adulthood and crippled everyone economically, so there's no place to go. now nobody can fuck except rich people and broke ass queers who never gave a damn anyway. the straights really done it to themselves

airhead969 6y ago

Greater population, increased competition for fewer resources/jobs, more stress about the future/less hope, more people living in dense/anonymous cities, more mobility, more distractions, less community, less IRL communication and socialization in general, worse social skills, overworked parents didn't teach them how to interact with others properly, extended adolescence, and more Hikikomori. People don't have sex when they're depressed, overweight, never go outside, and play video games all day.