23 ms·

Why are young people having so little sex? (2018)

• dash2 5y ago
  I work with a very large-scale UK survey that roughly covers the boomer generation: people born 1940-1970. Take a moment to guess the median lifetime number of sexual partners. . . . It's 3. Other people have less sex than you think.
  • throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Now tell us the mean, mode and standard deviation, show us the 25th and 75th percentiles and break all those stats out by gender. Paints a different picture doesn't it? There's a bell curve but the shape of the bell and the length of the tails can really add up to a lot of area not near the middle.
    • dash2 5y ago
      Actually the median is 3 for both sexes. Yes, of course there are some outliers who have (or report) very many partners.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • FabHK 5y ago
        Interestingly, the average must be the same for men and women (assuming equal numbers and considering only sex between one man and one woman), by construction. But that does not hold for the median necessarily.
  • brummm 5y ago
    The number of partners does in no way tell you much about the amount of sex people have. A person could have a single partner their whole life but bang every day. Compare that to a person who hooks up with a new person once every two weeks. The first person has 14 times more sex than the second but the number of partners would paint a very different picture.
    • xxs 5y ago
      > The first person has 14 times more sex One time a day only - here lies the problem.
  • carlmcqueen 5y ago
    Why would only having been with three people change how much sex you have had?
  • TigeriusKirk 5y ago
    I'm really skeptical that holds up on the later part of that interval.
• commandlinefan 5y ago
  My fear when I was young was that women for the most part really would rather not, but just put up with it because it was sort of required if you wanted to participate in the married and had kids portion of civilization. The older I get, the more I suspect I was probably right.
  • seneca 5y ago
    I can assure you, that is absolutely not the case for most women, though it may be for some. Women are perfectly capable of enjoying sex.
    • globular-toast 5y ago
      All women want sex, but they probably don't want sex with you. This is the biggest difference that people need to understand. Most men would have sex with most women. Most women would not have sex with most men. Even men in the top 10% of attractiveness can easily find women who won't have sex with them. Meanwhile women in the top 50% of attractiveness can effortlessly find men who will have sex with them.
    • zozbot234 5y ago
      They're also perfectly capable of not enjoying it. It's not altogether uncommon for women to experience a complete lack of sex drive and even active aversion to it, of a sort that most men (asexuals aside, ofc.) would only personally associate to some flu-like sickness or malaise. It's hardly fair to only point to those who are talking about wanting more, when just as many are saying the very opposite!
  • staticman2 5y ago
    I can imagine believing this before the internet, but it really isn't hard to find women online talking about how they are upset their partner doesn't want to have sex with them as much as they want to have sex.
• shadowofneptune 5y ago
  These surveys tend to lump the primarily heterosexual and the primarily homosexual into the same dataset. It's unhelpful since it means we barely show up in the tables.
• RappingBoomer 5y ago
  there are a lot of reasons, many good ones given in this thread, but here is another one: men are less physically active due to more office work...less physically active means less sex drive, generally
  • bradlys 5y ago
    The data doesn't indicate that men are less horny... It indicates the opposite. Men are still incredibly horny compared to women. It's that women are less interested in dating the average man than they were before. The childless rates (25% men vs 15% women), the amount of incels (25%+ for young men), etc. it's all much higher on the male side. This isn't because men aren't interested (an incel is involuntarily celibate) but because the women aren't. So, doesn't really follow with your theory...
• graderjs 5y ago
  Responding to the title: they get their dopamine and serotonin from smartphones x sex has become more risky (than it already was, heh -- STDs and pregnancy / child support) especially reputationally risky with revenge porn and fake rape accusations amplified by social media x 'woke' conflict around consent x pandemic?
  • CRConrad 5y ago
    Is the letter 'x' supposed to be punctuation nowadays?
    • FabHK 5y ago
      (Could be that it was supposed to be a bullet point introducing a new line, which HN purged?)
      • CRConrad 5y ago
        Aha: Yes, probably. And then they used just a single newline between paragraphs, which got eaten by the posting function. Took me too a while to learn to make paragraph breaks two newlines.
        • graderjs 5y ago
          Actually I meant it as multiplication. This idea times that idea, a multiplication of factors influencing.
• WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
• noduerme 5y ago
  Lack of eye contact. That's what I see among both sexes under the age of 30. Almost to the level of autism. An inability to have basic conversation. And the boys are totally ineffectual and terrified of trying to kiss a girl; it's been made faux pas to show any inclination. It's hard enough as a teenager to get up the courage to kiss a girl. Imagine if you think there's a 50/50 chance she'll completely destroy your life on social media, rather than just say "no thanks". In my mid-30s I ran through a spate of recent divorcees who all had almost exactly the same complaint. Their husband of 10 years hadn't slept with them in 5+ years, and was always in the basement playing video games or watching porn. Which he didn't want to watch with her. Two of them - totally separately - told me they would dress up in lingere and go to the basement and the husband would say he was too tired. A third said she felt "unfuckable" and started crying recounting it. (I said, oh no! You're totally fuckable! I also said, I would never play a video game rather than lay in bed with you. And it was like... holy shit) This is literally what's going on.
  • halo37253 5y ago
    [flagged]
    • captainredbeard 5y ago
      > We make it work and have sex a few times every month That’s not very much at all. Some of us are daily+ kind of people (and yes we have hard jobs that make a lot of money, too). Hope your wife is satisfied with this arrangement.
      • 11101010001100 5y ago
        How many kids do you have?
        • captainredbeard 5y ago
          3
        • 5y ago
• newaccount2021 5y ago
  [dead]
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• djohnston 5y ago
  Maybe sex isn't that great compared to new activities from a reward center perspective. Maybe the prevalence of circumcision in the US could explain why sex is less enticing than these other new activities.
  • codechad 5y ago
    Sex is the peak of human connectivity and intimacy. It is literally the reason you are here today. If you aren't good at sex or have bad sex, practice. That includes becoming physically fit to increase your stamina and strength during sex with your partner.
    • djohnston 5y ago
      Thanks chad, someday I hope to be as good at the boom boom as you :)
      • codechad 5y ago
    • danShumway 5y ago
      > Sex is the peak of human connectivity and intimacy. This philosophy is a recipe for a disastrous relationship. Every single person I've ever talked to in a long-running successful marriage has told me that sex is not a substitute for emotional intimacy, and that emotional intimacy is the core of their marriage that survives even as they age and even as they start to have sex less.
• pinephoneguy 5y ago
  • MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
• hiran88 5y ago
  From my perspective and direct experience, it’s widespread porn use, which has extremely detrimental effects on your dopamine system, which leads to something you might term ‘lack of charisma, confidence and vital energy’, which leads to less people having sex due to confidence/charisma issues and lack of any drive. By my experience and observation, porn is really bad for oneself, and it’s really addicting. I’m a millennial male, and at some point, all four of us in my friend group realized and mentioned we are addicted to porn. I still have addiction issues, but I’ve managed to reduce my use on average to once every 2-4 weeks from 4-5+ times a week, and the benefits to my entire life and being have been immense immense immense.
  • tenuousemphasis 5y ago
    Has it increased the frequency that you have sex?
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • beepbooptheory 5y ago
    Do you feel like porn prevented you from meeting people in the first place, or just made you not as satisfied with what relationships you had? As also a millenial dude, I definitely have gone through cycles of watching it alot, but always just in the times in between being in a relationship (or in college, just sleeping around in general). I definitely believe you, and well aware you are not alone in the peergroup, I just personally can't imagine my relationship to porn ever winning out over real sex. Even bad sex is better than the best porn.
  • Bancakes 5y ago
    That's overly complicated. You can't look at someone and say "Yep, he watches porn." It's more likely people satiate their primitive needs with porn, and realise they don't need all the emotional extras/burdens with relationships.
  • jstx1 5y ago
    This has no backing in actual science (regardless of what the cult-like communities on reddit and similar places claim). I think a lot of people misattribute many of their problems to porn because (1) they watch porn and (2) they have some serious life problems. But that doesn't mean that (1) causes (2).
• 02020202 5y ago
• elcapitan 5y ago
  So what's the problem when people are not forced anymore to adhere to stupid social games, faking interest in other people, wasting a lot of time on something that in the end is just a couple of minutes of satifsfying a body function? Seems like a huge plus. Nobody is forced to live that way, and probably everybody else is better off with the two worlds separated.
  • izzydata 5y ago
    I don't think they are suggesting that the reason is because humanity has evolved past our sexual desires. People still want it. They just aren't doing it.
    • elcapitan 5y ago
      I didn't either. The article mostly talks about porn as a substitute for sex to satisfy the desires, and that seems like a perfectly legitimate option.
  • lucic71 5y ago
• rand49an 5y ago
  Because they all live with their parents still. Moving out is more expensive than it used to be and peoples expectations are different.
  • jeffwask 5y ago
    Exactly, they can't afford it. Mating rituals are expensive.
    • Broken_Hippo 5y ago
      It isn't the rituals. Poor people have done them in the past. I'm over 40 and have done very few of those silly rituals, thankfully. I don't wear a wedding ring either. "Mating rituals" are quite possible to do cheaply. "Come over and play this game with me, and we can cook some food" It is, literally, living with one's parents. If I had to live with my parents, not only would I never be able to have sex in my own house, but I'd still - as an adult - have to lie about going to someone's house to have sex. I couldn't do the above example. No matter how old I am, my mother treats me as a child, generally with horrible sayings like, "my house, my rules" and the amount of contribution doesn't matter. As you might have guessed, my mother is conservative. My dad was too, while he was alive.
• caeril 5y ago
  It's burying the lede to suggest that young people are having less sex. The salient fact is that it's young men who are skewing this average down. Women, on average, are doing perfectly fine in the sexual marketplace, along with the top 10-15% of men. edit: The above was my reflexive response to the headline. Now that I've actually read the article, I have to say that the article is very good and quite comprehensive, but it seems that it merely dances around the above issue in the "Tinder Mirage" subsection, but doesn't actually directly confront it. An unfortunate oversight.
  • blodkorv 5y ago
    This, women have an abundance of top tire men to choose from.
    • woolion 5y ago
      Of course, since top tyre mens provide the best adherence, a paramount concern in wet conditions.
      • nafey 5y ago
        Not if you run Pirelli intermediates.
        • recursiveturtle 5y ago
          Slick answer.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • halo37253 5y ago
    • Wiseacre 5y ago
      Sounds incel-y. Most men have no problem sleeping around. They just don't want the women who are interested in them.
• haunter 5y ago
  Because turns out the 60s/70s were actually the outliers and now the pendulum swings back towards a modern puritanism.
• baxuz 5y ago
  The article almost exclusively talks about the US. One reason that isn't mentioned in the article is because the US is fundamentally based on puritanism and a lot of its values, especially concerning passion and sexuality are still prevalent in its culture. The "All American" OJ and corn flakes breakfast and circumcision (used as a form of genital mutilation to prevent masturbation) by Kellogs is still practiced to this day. In the US, sex is heavily politicized. On one hand, everything is hypersexualized, but there is nothing genuine about any of it. When you get to the basics of it — sex is wrong. "Look, but don't touch". Everything is relegated to the sphere of fantasy and imagination. Especially teenage sexuality is something that's vilified to no end. You can't expect adults to have a healthy sex life if everything they know about sex so far is that it's some sort of forbidden fruit. __________________ Eh sure. Might be wrong. This is my experience with people I've interacted with.
  • jereees 5y ago
    Sorry I must have missed something how do you link Kelloggs the cereal company with circumcision?
    • mcronce 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg#Views_on_sexuality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg#Views_on_s... is a solid tl;dr. He invented cornflakes thinking that that was a food that would inhibit libido and cause people to have less sex.
    • doubled112 5y ago
      https://www.history.com/news/dr-john-kellogg-cereal-wellness-wacky-sanitarium-treatments https://www.history.com/news/dr-john-kellogg-cereal-wellness...
    • jstx1 5y ago
      https://allthingscomedy.com/podcasts/46---live-w-patton-oswalt---the-cereal-men https://allthingscomedy.com/podcasts/46---live-w-patton-oswa...
    • deleted 5y ago
• andrewclunn 5y ago
• ramesh31 5y ago
  It's a winner take all market. Plenty of people are having plenty of sex. But most people don't want to have sex with most people.
• beaconstudios 5y ago
  Wow this thread is wild. My understanding is it's because nobody can afford their own place - either living with their parents or roommates.
  • halo37253 5y ago
    This is very true with the Gen Zers, Especially the Early Gen Z. You folk that are in your mid 20's. Really People born after 1995 are not Millennial. Its hard to even justify people born in 94 a Millennial. You don't remember 911, and you didn't experience last last economic recession first hand in the work force. If your first out of HS job was after 2012, You are a Gen Zer. They simply are struggling, very few have moved up in their career paths. And so far have been one of the most lazy generations.
    • beaconstudios 5y ago
      I don't agree at all that they are a lazy generation. They've just been presented with little to no economic opportunities, especially in areas that many of them care about like climate collapse, which is an in-our-lifetime threat to them. There's not much in the way of an economic ladder, and many are saddled with a great deal of student debt because they've had it drilled into them that a degree is the only way to get a good job. Then you graduate with a degree and there are still no good jobs, but you still have to pay it off.
      • halo37253 5y ago
        I've had so many Gen Z interns that I've noticed they dont care about being fired from a job right out of College. Little Drive to keep themselves busy. They don't like to ask questions, and would rather do something wrong than ask and do it right the first time. Even If I show them how to do it right the first time, if you forget, just ask. There isn't much of a ladder to climb as Millennials are still there to fill the void. Millennials have work experience and work hard. But there is a notable gap and a Gen Zer is easy to pick from the crowd. Not all are bad though. In fact many didn't have to struggle like a Millennial did early in life. My first 5 years in the work force was slow moving up the ladder. Entering the workforce in 2008 was not pretty for me. Problem with GenZ is they didn't eat the flintstone vitamins we Millennial ate, and it shows.
• ChicagoBoy11 5y ago
  ITT: Folks quickly contributing their "definite reason" of why this is happening which is also covered in incredible detail and with tons of nuance in the article. Seriously, read the article, it's good.
  • mathteddybear 5y ago
    Did you get to the part about choking? To me, the article seems just a long collections of folks contributing speculations. I might be biased because the wife of my cousing-in-law is researching these topics scientifically
    • danShumway 5y ago
      Agreed. There's very little actual science in this article, it just jumps around a bunch. It's peppered with phrases like: - "Many -- or all -- of these things may be true." - "Let’s consider this lure for a moment." - "I can’t know that they were representative, though I did seek out people with a range of experiences." - "Some observers have suggested..." There's a huge amount of positing that something may possibly be a cause, often at best backed up with research that shows that it exists (as opposed to evidence that there's a strong correlation or any kind of scientific testing to indicate a causal relationship). There's also a ton of "person X says Y in their new book, could they be right?". I don't understand where the praise for this article is coming from, if this is actually where the research on dating behavior is right now, then it's pseudoscience. I honestly would have expected HN to be a lot more critical of this, I've seen articles with less conjecture than this one get torn to shreds on here.
  • error_code99 5y ago
    Yeah it's not great. They made a lot of good "could be this" points, but nothing to really back it up. Kinda like Freud, enough kernels of truth to be kinda accurate in certain situations, but nothing that would stand up to any real scientific rigor.
• __marvin_the__ 5y ago
  > He couldn’t escape the sense that hitting on someone in person had, in a short period of time, gone from normal behavior to borderline creepy. As a Z-ennial, this was one of my confusions, growing up. I would read articles on dating that, in today's standards, I think would not hold up.
  • Throwaway8373 5y ago
    I think this is key. Men's courthship is _extremely_ complex these years and has exclusively been vilified. It appears as it is OK for people the merely point out how _not_ to court, and then men, automatically, knows how to do it right.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• thenoblesunfish 5y ago
  (2018)
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• throw3838 5y ago
  To enjoy sex, or to even have a sex drive, you have to be fit. Maybe it is obesity.
  • Jaruzel 5y ago
    To put a slight different additional spin on that: To enjoy sex, or to even have a sex drive, you have to be not taking anti-depression medication. Maybe it's the rise in depressed people[1]? ---- [1] I am one of that number, and take meds, and suffer as stated.
    • malfist 5y ago
      Disclaimer: Anecdote (does not mean data) I was one of those who took an SSRI and had a change in my sex drive. I took escitalopram and it killed my sex drive, doc switched me to trazodone and things returned to normal. If your SSRI is causing you problems, talk to your doctor, they can switch it up. Everyone responds differently, you should be able to find one that won't mess with it.
  • shadowofneptune 5y ago
    Where did you get that idea? It's not true at all.
• nestorD 5y ago
  Are they? and how do you define young people? The two statistics I found in the introduction of the article are: > percentage of high-school students who’d had intercourse dropped from 54 to 40 percent > U.S. teen pregnancy rate has plummeted to a third of its modern high Basically highschoolers are getting less pregnant (good) and having less sex, this might not extent to people between 20 and 30 years old. Here is another article with more detailled data, they conclude that it is likely caused by US teens being less risk averse (correlation with less drinking, less smoking and less driving: teens are just being more responsible than their parents) : https://ifstudies.org/blog/fewer-american-high-schoolers-having-sex-than-ever-before https://ifstudies.org/blog/fewer-american-high-schoolers-hav...
• PartiallyTyped 5y ago
  Mid 20s, here is my perspective. I have spent the last 7-8 years studying like my life depended on it, and I have little to show for it. I am autistic, so I haven't developed the social skills necessary. Every social interaction is a conscious process and I have to consciously read everything to interact "normally". The effort is simply not worth it. Why should I even bother approaching a person when with high probability they will think I am a creep? Why bother ruining my mood and another person's? Is sex worth the effort? Is a relationship with a person who will end up judging me for being too weird worth it? Is the time and effort spent in all that "worth it"? If my last 2 relationships are any indication, a relationship just isn't worth the hassle.
  • queuebert 5y ago
    Feel better, friend. The mere fact that you are concerned about being a creep means you're one of the good ones. Relationships are hard, even with good people, so try to lower the stakes. Have a friendly coffee with no real expectations with more people. More dates with less expectation. This is what helped me. I said something completely stupid and autistic on my first date with my now wife, but she stuck with me because she saw potential. Relationships are a numbers game. And to help decide who to keep and who to discard, I like the Secretary Problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
• stuckinhell 5y ago
  I found this article a bit disturbing on several different points. - romance being segregated from the routines of daily life - the game-ification of dating apps - the fact younger generations seem to be unable to read other peoples emotions - the most 1/3 attractive women got 2/3 of all messages - the most attractive men got 11 times as many messages as lowest - the way men and women are emulating porn - women becoming anti-men from poor repeated sexual experiences It feels like we are heading into a dystopia. I don't see how this continues on without an extreme reactionary events. Perhaps we already seeing this with new political movements like the article mentions some right wing groups are antiporn. I'm beginning to think the sexual revolution and social media revolution together are just too much for the majority of humans. We aren't gods, we are primates. Comparing yourself to thousands of people is going to crush you. Treating people as commodities for sex or relationships is going to burn you out. This is all super concerning, and gives me a lot of new insights into why I'm seeing so many young women and men become "revolutionary" albeit in very different ways.
• stickyricky 5y ago
  A large component is hormonal birth control. We chemically castrate young girls before the point of sexual maturity. It crushes their libido for the duration of use and may inhibit full development. My wife on hormonal birth control is the not the same person as she is off. Its sad the article didn't address this topic at all. When you get finasteride for hair loss the first thing they tell you about is sexual side effects. My wife didn't know about the sexual side-effects of hormonal birth control until she was in her late 20's. And she had to learn it from me... No doctor ever mentions it. The article doesn't mention. The clinical literature is clear that hormonal birth control has an effect on libido and you can see thousands of forum posts by women complaining of this exact thing. Its bizarre to me that more people don't talk about it.
  • seneca 5y ago
    We don't talk about it because "the pill" was one of the sacred cows of the Womens' Liberation movement, and any negative commentary, however rooted in fact, is taken as an attack on the idea of social freedom for women. It's unfortunate, because as you said it has significant effects on those who take it.
    • hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
      We really, really need to fight this attitude of fearing the discussion ("because you help the alt right") in all aspects of social life. This brings so much harm to humanity. I don't understand why. So many things have a positive and a negative side. Why shouldn't we discuss both? If anything, admitting a fact that doesn't fit your world view is not a sign of weakness but clear reason. I wish more people understood that, including journalists.
      • tmikaeld 5y ago
        Career politicians use polarisation as a tool to get votes and as long as pocketing people as us vs them continue to be accepted in the societal system, it will just grow and be reinvented. Cancel culture and fake news, are just fuel for the fire..
• Throwaway8373 5y ago
  One of my greatest problems is knowing what is right and wrong when courting for a mate. The rules are changing so rapidly that what I learned in sex-ed is outdated, and not even talking about what my parents could teach me. The public discourse on sex is also mostly negative and discouraging. And this is what we meditate on a daily basis -- when you hear more about women feeling the need to wear, well weapons, when going out than you hear them wanting to be courted, well then I'd rather go and drink a bear and play some billiard with my mates. I have recently started reading the works of John Gray (the one with Venus and Mars) and David Deida. Men that provide a somewhat coherent narrative and definitely provide material better to mediate on than the mass media. Does anyone have some recommendation on literature supporting men courting women?
  • karmakurtisaani 5y ago
    I've been out of the game for so long that maybe I'm completely out of touch, but if I was to re-enter the market for some reason, I'd approach this more as a challenge to get to know people and make friends rather than a quick way to get to rub genitals together. That would basically lead to ignoring anyone expecting to be courted, but I don't think I'd lose much in that. Following stupid dating game rules is stupid.
    • Throwaway8373 5y ago
      I am not entirely sure what this is a response to. Had I written Neil Strauss and the PUA movement, it would have seemed merited?
      • karmakurtisaani 5y ago
        To me the original comment came off as frustrated and possibly anxious about the "rules" of dating and I tried to respond to that. Maybe i missed the mark.
        • swat535 5y ago
          Why is seeking dating advice for men is frowned upon ? Women do it all the time and quickly learn the intricacies of dating at a young age. Friendship and courtship are two different beasts and I bet women would like to be able to go on great dates with men who know have at least done a minimum of research in this area. Sure, there are many snake oil dating "gurus" out there but I think many men could genuinely benefit from _some_ form of this.
• __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
  I'm surprised the article doesn't talk more about the population dynamics of any animal with a fixed amount of space: it either consumes everything it needs to survive and goes extinct, or it approaches an equilibrium population. I have to imagine that pre-agrarian humans occasionally made the wrong choice there and the whole tribe starved, so genes for population regulation were likely selected for. Less sex as a response to less space (at your parents house or in the tiny apartment that you can barely afford) seems like the straightforward and favorable way for those genes to express.
  • laszlojamf 5y ago
    This isn't how any other animal behave though. Wolves don't breed less when there is a scarcity of food, they just starve more. Making this a genetic thing is a bit of a stretch.
    • __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
      It's been fairly well studied in voles. A quick search turns up a paper titled: > A mechanism for population self-regulation: Social density suppresses GnRH expression and reduces reproductivity in voles I wouldn't expect an absence of food to do it, but instead a surplus of neighbors. By the time overpopulation starts affecting the food source it's a little late to do anything about it.
• PaulHoule 5y ago
  If you listened to this summary of research https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXU0kRSV1rU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXU0kRSV1rU and believed it you might come to the conclusion that most people having casual sex aren't having sex because they want to have sex but because they want to influence their social standing in their group. I'm particularly amused by the homosocial character of the pick-up and seduction industry, that is, it is men talking to other men about their conquests and attempted conquests. It's like they are doing it to prove they are not gay, not because they really want sex or other intimacy.
• throway97 5y ago
  If you are a young man in this environment, I hate to say it but you are going to need something more similar to a “strategy” than “tactics.” Approaching or chasing women, purely to try to further the species, is now profoundly uncool and stigmatized. The best way to get sex now is To actually build or organize something meaningful which has the side effect of putting you in touch or opening reasonable conversation pathways to a wide range of people. Unless you have a logical, justified reason to talk to a woman for “business purposes,” you probably shouldn’t bother. Everyone is too busy, and sex is felt to be a third place priority behind work. I am married and don’t need to play this game anymore, but I have noticed that organizing a event to support a “for good cause” has enabled me to talk to any woman, anywhere, of every age. If I were single, I would very much focus on building a business; startup; community which has a public good element to it. Unfortunately, not everyone in society is a creative entrepreneur type. For me, I am highly introverted and don’t want anything to do with most avenues for social interaction. Another strategy: Learn to make friends with women and ask them for help. That’s how I met my wife. Having several female friends who can give you advice and referrals is 10,0000x better than playing the tinder game. Deep Friendship with women is something I have learned is one of the more important aspects of the Richness of my life. Women will get you other women, trust me.
  • bradlys 5y ago
    > Women will get you other women, trust me. My best friends are women. Trust me, this doesn’t get you anywhere. I met my wife while I was out dancing and I seduced her. I found that method to be the best of anything I’ve ever seen and most of my male friends would agree. Friends, in my experience, are completely worthless when it comes down to getting partners. Many friends don’t know single people or single people who are of interest to you. Advice from women is also incredibly bad - as it’s usually given with a lot of assumptions that the woman deeply loves you already. (I see this online a lot) Whereas men’s advice tends to be a lot more from the opposite side - and is a lot better for that. I like the saying - you don’t ask a fish how to catch it - you ask a fisherman. It truly sums it up well.
• jdrc 5y ago
  Sex mhm so much trouble and so many hoops to jump. Sex is for boomers who measure themselves by it. Thanks to porn and technology you no longer have to wait in the rain for cold, it gets delivered.
• james_burden 5y ago
  I'm glad I grew up with sisters and played a ton with them as a kid. I've never had a problem in this area.
• nluken 5y ago
  I quite liked this article. I would be interested in more analysis on the environmental effects of endocrine disruptors as a result of plastic seepage and hormonal birth control, but it seems like it's not super easy to find without venturing into crazy conspiracy land. I don't want to sound like General Jack Ripper but at the end of the day we're just animals. If the environmental impact of these pollutants is pervasive enough I would imagine it would have large aggregate effects on human behavior.
• D13Fd 5y ago
  There are lots of good reasons in the article. One reason I didn't think they paid enough attention to, though, is that there is just a lot more stuff to do these days. We still have TV, books, board games, the great outdoors, hobbies, and all of the other things we had 30 years ago. But we also have video games, commercial-free streaming TV and movies, social media, and all of the other high-grade digital entertainment that comes with the Internet. And it's right in our pocket or at our side 24/7, and spoon-fed to us by algorithms designed to maximize our engagement. People just don't need to get bored any more. There is always instant, easy comfort available. I think that's why it's harder to find motivation to go out and do things that are even more fun, and certainly more meaningful, but which are also more work.
• cjbgkagh 5y ago
  I see incels as collateral damage from the the Gender Wars. A schism intentionally driven to supplement the broader Culture Wars. I only expect this to get worse and have no idea how it will end. Incels show up in stats but most everyone is suffering. I do know that victim blaming will continue while we learn the hard way why we had traditions in the first place.
  • moistly 5y ago
    Incels have been around forever. Go listen to old music: abundant lyrics describing incel behaviour. Go read old books: plenty of characters who engage in incel behaviour. The only difference now is that they’ve organized themselves into echo chambers that only serve to harm themselves further.
  • k__ 5y ago
    I wouldn't say there are any culture or gender wars going on. I think, it's simply the patriarchy is crumbling. With virtually mandatory monogamy, women had to see where to get a mate after the "top 20%" were gone, now they simply share the "good ones", whatever that means. The other side was obviously, the "bottom 80%" of men had to put in less effort, because they just had to wait for the women who didn't get "a good one". And now they wake up and nobody wants them anymore. To me this is a temporary problem. Men will learn to adapt, and things will get to a less skewed distribution again.
    • cjbgkagh 5y ago
      Young men were already low social status, and now they’re even lower. Often judged on immutable characteristics like hight. In my opinion none of what you are proposing will happen. There will be a substantial uncontrolled reaction. In my opinion men and women need each other and if men withdraw and stop trying women will also suffer.
      • k__ 5y ago
        I had the impression it was the other way around. Women judged on appearence and men judged on financial success.
• danShumway 5y ago
  What the heck is wrong with older generations? Leave young people alone, they literally can't win in this discussion. This article is filled with baseless pseudoscience and random cultural anxiety, and without any real substance the article just ties all of it to this phenomenon that isn't even really definitively bad. People look at anything different about teenagers and young adults, and this becomes an opportunity to air out every single grievance we have with younger cultures, even though we often have zero evidence that there's any causal link between our anxiety and the result exists, or even that the end result is itself bad. ---- Oh, young people have less sex? This is definitely a problem, and judging by the article and some of the comments I'm seeing around it, the cause is: - Too much hookup culture. - Not enough hookup culture, nobody is hitting on each other anymore. - The hookup culture is in the wrong place, people don't meet up in bars anymore. - Those darn dating apps. You can't form a connection on a screen. - Sexting doesn't count, but also why aren't people sexting enough? - Young people just don't know how to shake someone's hand and look them in the eye anymore. - They'd rather play video games, and the idea someone might like a video game more than sex causes me emotional stress for some reason. - They're taking this too seriously, they expect everyone to be an expert at sex, and their standards are too high. - They're not taking this seriously enough, the young expect to just be able to do sex really well out of the gate, because complaining about #$X&ing sexual work ethic is apparently where we are as a society. - Have we tried training them to do sex better? - Pornography. You know, just in general. - Women are terrified of men who are bad at sex, and so now we all have to deal with the fallout caused by men who are bad at sex and giving the entire gender a bad name. - It's the hormones/drugs, are we giving kids too much? - It's too little chemicals, are they eating right? - Advertising makes people uncomfortable in their bodies. - Maybe people feel too comfortable in their bodies? We don't have evidence for this, but let's imagine if it was happening. - Women aren't asking for specific sex acts that we think they should be asking for. Is it a problem with education, maybe they just don't know those positions/acts feel good? But at least we can all agree that it is definitely a problem that they're not doing sex the way I want them to. ---- This is just a laundry list of everything older generations hate about the youth, with a thin premise tied to it to justify interviewing a bunch of people who are all like, "well, instinctively we feel like hitting on someone is now creepy, and we feel that's bad." But really, you find out that the big objections outside of just general "everything is worse now" sentiments are that it might mean immigration increases to sustain the population, and also Toys R Us is having more trouble. Which... just heck off, now we're going to get mad at Millennials/Gen-Z for not supporting the toy market well enough? Throw in a dash of "it's the younger generation's fault that incels exist" and "the stuff I think is normal some people find creepy" just for flavor. I want to complain that there's no way to win, that if Gen-Z was having more sex we'd be having the exact same conversation except coming up with reasons why increased sex was bad. But honestly, the specific argument is not the real problem. I just feel like people in the media need to take a chill pill and leave Gen-Z alone. I don't see solid evidence in this article that any of this is a problem, and as long as all of the researchers they interview can talk about their feelings, my feeling is that declining teen pregnancy is probably a good thing, and it's a thing that older generations have wanted for a long time. ----- I also can't even begin to express how frustrating paragraphs like this are: > Humans’ sexual behavior is one of the things that distinguish us from other species: Unlike most apes, and indeed most animals, humans have sex at times and in configurations that make conception not just unlikely but impossible (during pregnancy, menopause, and other infertile periods; with same-sex partners; using body parts that have never issued babies and never will). As a species, we are “bizarre in our nearly continuous practice of sex,” writes the UCLA professor Jared Diamond, who has studied the evolution of human sexuality. “Along with posture and brain size, sexuality completes the trinity of the decisive aspects in which the ancestors of humans and great apes diverged.” True, nobody ever died of not getting laid, but getting laid has proved adaptive over millions of years: We do it because it is fun, because it bonds us to one another, because it makes us happy. > A fulfilling sex life is not necessary for a good life, of course, but lots of research confirms that it contributes to one. Having sex is associated not only with happiness, but with a slew of other health benefits. The relationship between sex and wellness, perhaps unsurprisingly, goes both ways: The better off you are, the better off your sex life is, and vice versa. Unfortunately, the converse is true as well. Not having a partner—sexual or romantic—can be both a cause and an effect of discontent. Moreover, as American social institutions have withered, having a life partner has become a stronger predictor than ever of well-being. There are other animals that have sex for fun. No, the fundamental thing that distinguishes humans from the beasts is not that we wear condoms, come on. There's this tone running through the article of "we're not saying you have to have sex to be emotionally fulfilled as a human being, but we are going to constantly look at you weird and act like you might be emotionally stunted because of it." I'm aroace, so I may be over-sensitive to this kind of, "we're not saying there's anything wrong with you, we're just going to imply it over and over again" talk, but holy crud, could older generations stop using everyone else's sex life to validate whatever insecurities they have, even for just ten seconds? There's very little substance in this article beyond pop-science and people writing books about mindfulness, and then in very worried tones saying, "but maybe these two things are related, let's consider that." There's so many non-sequiturs and random jumps in logic. It really feels like just an excuse to talk about how the kids these days are all wrong.
• rkk3 5y ago
  The societal/behavioral changes are interesting, but what about the physiological changes? Significant declines in sperm counts Increased medicating; ADHD, Anxiety, Depression, Hormonal Birth Control Childhood Obesity over 20% in the US
  • paulnpace 5y ago
    Of these, the sperm count strikes me as more causal, while the others may be results of some problem. Granted, the decline in sperm count is caused by something, but in relation to impact on behaviors, the decline will cause (as proxy) changes, and of those changes could be the increased medication, for example.
    • spywaregorilla 5y ago
      Sperm count dropping is caused by obesity
      • paulnpace 5y ago
        > Sperm count dropping is caused by obesity It may be the obesity decreases sperm count, but sperm count is dropping in people who are not obese. More than a decade ago there were reports on studies where the authors made simple extrapolations that sperm count would be zero by 2050, but these simple extrapolations are holding true in today's trends.
        • spywaregorilla 5y ago
          I searched for a source to credibly defend that statement and have found none. I'm open to being shown otherwise. Some studies will bin people by BMI or some metric but fail to do any analysis on whether people aren't fatter within the bins. E.g. if the bell curve shifts right, the average weight of people within the slimmest band will still be heavier than before; even if the maximum BMI/weight is still capped at the same upper bound. And the deltas on sperm counts within healthy weight ranges are very small in most studies to begin with. edit: searched in the past; not the few minutes since your comment*
• Overtonwindow 5y ago
  Sex is great and all, but have you ever been truly in love, or felt loved by another? Sex is easy, but true love, and relationships are harder to come by.
  • globular-toast 5y ago
    I've experienced all three. In my experience these things are important when you don't have them and unimportant when you do have them.
• amriksohata 5y ago
  Why would an individual spend money on clothes, meals etc. to get spend time with a partner going through dating first base, second base etc, when they can just do it all online?
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• yodsanklai 5y ago
  Didn't read this too long article, but is it true that young people are having little sex? any reliable source about this?
  • gerbilly 5y ago
    Yeah, the article. :-)
• jfengel 5y ago
• disambiguation 5y ago
  This article is extensive but surprisingly doesn't discuss religion at all, which we know has been in steep decline in the west. While not specific to young people, it seems birth rates are strongly correlated to religiosity. > Model 1 confirms that women for whom religion is important in daily life have higher fertility intentions (table 4). Compared to non-religious women, who intend two children on average, women for whom religion is somewhat important intend 0.31 additional children and women for whom religion is very important in daily life intend 0.69 additional children. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2723861/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2723861/
  • jdrc 5y ago
    it also correlates with being poor, and being uneducated. Fertility is not the object here, but sexuality
• CRConrad 5y ago
  From TFA: > Take for example the online hate and real-life violence waged by the so-called incels—men who claim to be “involuntarily celibate.” Their grievances, which are illegitimate and vile, offer a timely reminder that isolated young people are vulnerable to extremism of every sort. Sure, the "remedies" some incels resort to are illegitimate and vile, but to dismiss their actual grievances as such feels a bit weird after having spent most of a long, long article describing exactly how the incels' grievances arose. Especially apparent in the section on dating apps: The overwhelming majority of guys get absolutely no responses. Sure seems to point towards women being much more choosy than men, which is what I've understood, in a nutshell, the incels' main grievance to be.