Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023121996854

by elsewhen • 5 years ago

82 239 5 years ago

journals.sagepub.com

blakesterz• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years 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."

gameswithgo• 5 years ago

Well perhaps reality doesn’t agree with your assumptions?

jawns• 5 years 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.

ovi2562• 5 years 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.

hwbehrens• 5 years 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/s10508-019-014...

temp0826• 5 years ago

There’s a joke here in South America when you see a family walking around with many children....”no television”

mywittyname5• 5 years 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.

imbnwa8• 5 years 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.

nerdponx2• 5 years 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_law2• 5 years 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.

marcodiego• 5 years ago

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

backtoyoujim• 5 years ago

Great. Now all I can think about is the Matrix human pods playing the pornhub theme as they close.

metalliqaz9• 5 years ago

i'm all for it as long as it enables us to stop consuming every last drop of life on this planet

tluyben2• 5 years 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?

imbnwa8• 5 years ago

What'd you think the killer app for Neuralink was gonna be? Just joking, of course

KaiserPro• 5 years ago

my wife frowns on my doing that.

rkalla• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years 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

scotty79• 5 years ago

Apps that enable random hookups discourage people from random hookups? Doesn't sound plausible.

MattGaiser3• 5 years ago

This study says the number of people participating in hookups is down, not that hookups are down.

KMag3• 5 years ago

That partly depends on your thoughts on the validity of the paradox of choice.

metalliqaz9• 5 years ago

I don't think this hypothesis holds water. Individuals motivated to copulate might initially perceive an abundance of choice, but it would be quickly self-correcting as hookups don't materialize.

The falling alcohol consumption seems much more plausible in my opinion.

nickthemagicman7• 5 years ago

Why do people keep going back to junk food as good outcomes don't materialize?

Humans are not rational.

dominotw• 5 years ago

The apps trick us into believing that there is always someone better at the next swipe.

How though. Wouldn't you learn pretty fast that it isn't the case.

inetknght• 5 years ago

How though. Wouldn't you learn pretty fast that it isn't the case.

Many people don't learn.

Those that do learn would be dissuaded from trying alternatives for anticipation (fear?) of a repeat experience.

the_only_law2• 5 years ago

I'm not sure quite how to explain it, but I get a very uneasy feeling from dating apps. I feel like I'm constantly looking at the same person over and over again, The pics are the same, the bios are copy/paste, overused lines. It doesn't feel like people trying to date, but rather people trying advertise their lifestyle / social media presence. Some of them are worse than others and some seem to only attract a single type of personality. It almost all feels fake

Then go to read some r/tinder advice and it makes sense. The Advice tends to boil down to creating your profile formulaic, attempting to be different or add much personality docks you points.

On another note if someone could please let me know how all these people are constantly affording retreats to all sorts of countries, please let me know ;)

nerdjon4• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years ago

And still do in most of the world outside of the lone-wolf United States.

uses• 5 years 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?

Fricken2• 5 years 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-...

ragnese2• 5 years ago

Do you have a source for that 78% number? GenX is old. A genXer "living at home" seems to me to be more likely "genXers are taking care of their elderly parents (boomers)".

jfengel• 5 years ago

GenX is old.

Gee, thanks.

/old

evgen• 5 years ago

78% of GenX? Yeah, gonna need a citation on that one.

Actually, since GenX was probably the last generation where wide-scale home ownership was within reach I can see that fact being true if the home in question is the one they own.

robotastronaut2• 5 years ago

While I agree that there are many parts of our society that are broken, I don’t think that living with parents (or grandparents) is part of that. If anything, I think the constant pressure to be fully independent by the time you’re in your early 20s is the indicator. In much of the world, it’s very common and even encouraged to live with previous generations, sometimes after marriage. There are a ton of benefits from this arrangement, including built-in care for younger and older folks, better ability to save, etc. I’ve seen more and more successful tech folks building multi-generation homes here in America to try to move towards this model for the future. I think the brokenness of the system is the degree to which we shame people that are diverging from the older American model.

lotsofpulp3• 5 years ago

In much of the world, it’s very common and even encouraged to live with previous generations, sometimes after marriage. There are a ton of benefits from this arrangement, including built-in care for younger and older folks, better ability to save, etc.

My parents’ generation comes from a country where it’s common for married couples to live with the parents. All the cousins who are economically able to moved out to their own house. The only married couples living with their parents are the ones whose parents can’t afford to live alone, or who themselves can’t afford to live alone.

And unless more soundproof rooms become the norm, I can easily see why a young couple would not want to live in the same house as their parents. Most Americans houses are drywall, and nothing in between and sound really travels. As far as I can tell, having parents down the road, but in a separate house is the ideal.

watwut9• 5 years ago

I agree, but also "built-in care for younger and older folks" means that "women are expected to do that work". The "women do that work" is achievable without living together with parents.

But, even if you do live together, that work does not happen automatically by itself. Someone actually have to spend additional time doing that additional care work. Just living together wont magically provide care without someone spending additional effort.

watwut9• 5 years ago

Living with parents at least till marriage was the norm for large parts (majority) of population for large parts of history.

mywittyname5• 5 years ago

You can live with your parents and still have sex. It isn't weird or anything, unless you try it on the couch...

caymanjim2• 5 years ago

It's weird if you're a grown-ass man or woman. If you're unfortunate enough to be mooching off your parents in your 40s, you at least ought to have the decency to go somewhere else to do your business.

caymanjim2• 5 years ago

This number is clearly wrong on its face. And in the case of GenXers, regardless of what percentage are living with their parents, I suspect the majority of those arrangements are that the parent is living with the child because the parent needs support, not the other way around.

fortran77• 5 years 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/

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-f...

lotsofpulp3• 5 years 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.

danhak2• 5 years 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.

nerdjon4• 5 years 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.

danhak2• 5 years ago

I’m not suggesting that this fear is part of conscious reasoning.

KMag3• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

watwut9• 5 years 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.

imbnwa8• 5 years 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.

mrkramer2• 5 years 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• 5 years ago

ZPG in full effect

nickthemagicman7• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

nickthemagicman7• 5 years 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.

ceilingcorner8• 5 years 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• 5 years ago

Young people having casual sex is the natural state of not just civilization, but the entire human species.

ceilingcorner8• 5 years 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.

metalliqaz9• 5 years ago

It amuses me when people wax poetic about a time long past, when people were chaste and pure. Ha! Hormones be hormones, and young people have been doing what they do for as long as there have been young people.

justaman• 5 years ago

I think there is an argument that civilization as we have come to know it was not based on casual sex, rather pair-bonding.

orange_tee• 5 years 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.

ceilingcorner8• 5 years ago

This is old wisdom, perpetually forgotten, recently remembered anew.

marton78• 5 years ago

Therefore, not perpetually forgotten.

covidthrow3• 5 years ago

This is not old wisdom coming back, it's the dynamics of casual sex changing through dating and hook up apps.

scoutt• 5 years ago

What if pair bonding is part of the formative process?

zepto2• 5 years 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.

throwaway85815• 5 years 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.

metalliqaz9• 5 years ago

you sound bitter

sawmurai• 5 years ago

Who said OP is in the inactive bucket? ;)

ceilingcorner8• 5 years ago

This was more or less the purpose of monogamy. If you observe many societies that don’t strongly enforce it, you see that wealthy men end up having tons of wives, while poor men have none.

Same situation is happening in America, we just don’t call it polygamy because it has been reduced entirely to the physical act.

DC13504• 5 years ago

The unfortunate reality of sexual freedom is that most men would never be freely chosen for casual sex. The only reason they historically got laid was because of social and economic pressure against women. I don’t think it’s possible to have both gender equality and large scale monogamy.

Lammy3• 5 years ago

Sounds like we should eliminate the need for and concept of wealth, then, so people can congregate based on shared interest instead of having to factor in the possibility of monetary support from their partner(s).

oceanghost2• 5 years ago

Anecdotally, I think you're on the money.

"Poly" folks are overrepresented on dating apps because they never shut their profiles down after meeting someone.

What's surprising to me is how much of it there is. I was on bumble/tinder and a couple of other sites when I was single, and it was so bad the first question I would ask was, "are you poly?"

I don't see any value prop in being poly for a man. Every time I've seen my friends attempt it, the woman is getting laid like crazy, and the man is struggling to find anyone. Imagine dating as a poly man-- what do you tell a woman you meet? "Well, there's no future for us because I have a wife and a girlfriend, but I'd still really like to get into your pants."

And then, there are issues of disease and pregnancy. You're trusting people you don't know to act responsibly as far as disease goes. And pregnancy is a nightmare-- I know a woman who has a husband and two boyfriends, and she turned up pregnant. It was a nightmare for everyone involved. Nobody knew who'd done the deed.

Sex is DANGEROUS.

I will get downvoted to hell for this, but, "poly" is just a modern version of Cuckoldry. If you're into that, that's your business. But all of the ephemera and justifications around it are just thinly veiled nonsense.

throwaway85815• 5 years ago

100%. And single young men with no prospect of a family life are not going to just accept their lot. The director of the FBI in the last few days listed “incels” as a group of “extremists” that they are concerned about. But society can’t subdue 30% of men through law enforcement. It has to give them a place in society. And as you point out, that is the function of monogamous marriage. We are in trouble.

dvfjsdhgfv3• 5 years ago

I hear this explanation often, but it ignores the fact that only a small fraction of population uses Tinder.

I don't know the real reason, but if I was to guess, the most obvious one is that there are so many interesting things to do, learn, engage in, that making considerable effort in order to have sex simply doesn't seem worth it, that's all.

MattGaiser3• 5 years ago

So basically men quit sex because it is difficult to obtain for them and there are now other options but women continue to have sex because it is easy to obtain?

nickthemagicman7• 5 years ago

There's tons of dating apps besides Tinder.

kar5pt5• 5 years ago

50% of Americans in their 20s and roughly a third of Americans in all age groups report having used dating apps. What do you mean "a small percentage of the population"?

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/02/06/10-facts-ab...

mywittyname5• 5 years ago

It's probably more than that. You don't have to be some 6ft tall hunk to land a woman. It definitely helps but it isn't required.

What is required is that you try and don't get discouraged. It's a lot easier to stay home, play video games, and watch porn than it is to date. Plus, successful dating reduces time for video games.

zepto2• 5 years ago

You don't have to be some 6ft tall hunk to land a woman. It definitely helps but it isn't required.

This is true, but what you do need is access to women so that you can learn what they want.

If those women have a low incentive to spend time with less physically (or financially) attractive men, it’s going to be hard for the less attractive ones to develop the necessary capacities.

kar5pt5• 5 years ago

You've obviously never been an unattractive man on Tinder. It's not just "hard", it's mentally excruciating. You can easily swipe through thousands of women and not find one that's willing to even have a conversation with you. I'm honestly surprised that dating app related suicides aren't more common.

I'm tired of this, "just keep trying and you'll land a woman" narrative. It's the same logic that capitalists use to tell poor people, "just keep working hard and you'll succeed". It expects people to keep facing failure after failure and never let's us admit that for some men dating is just not worth the pain involved. And then when they see the writing on the wall and give up, that's just used as more evidence that "men don't try hard enough" and aren't willing to face failure.

twobitshifter• 5 years ago

There is an easier explanation- that the young women are having sex with men older than 24. With people getting married later in life the pool of unmarried men from 24-30 is much larger than in the past. My understanding is that younger women tend to prefer a slightly older guy and men tend to prefer a slightly younger woman. In the 18-24 age group, the 18-24 year old men are competing against themselves and older men.

durnygbur5• 5 years ago

To cheer you up it doesn't get any better as you age.

oceanghost2• 5 years ago

I used to work near a college, this is a very real thing.

valbaca• 5 years ago

I expected the redpill to be popular on HN but this is just absurd and disgusting.

"The bottom of the male market has just fallen out completely."

It's not a market. People aren't commodities.

"you could be the only one available or could woo women through other qualities."

Isn't this just the "last man on the earth" respun as "last guy at the bar?" Since when has there been a shortage of guys at bars?

TheAdamAndChe• 5 years ago

Like it or not, the dating pool is a function of supply and demand. That makes it a market.

Social media has expanded the potential dating pool while removing anonymity. This changes behaviors.

devchix• 5 years ago

Heh. For this reason I avoid HN threads having to do with gender and sex. There's a florid streak of redpill-ism that converges on these threads. Last week someone used "carousel" unironically. In this thread, "hypergamy". My bingo card is waiting for "Chad". Run away, quick!

thefz• 5 years ago

Still it is genes doing what genes do, only sped up 10x due to the technology being used.

838812052807016• 5 years ago

You can swap the sexes and apply the same argument, predicting the opposite result. So I don't think you have it quite right.

BlueTie• 5 years 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.

metalliqaz9• 5 years ago

people suck. embrace your inner misanthrope and avoid them as much as possible

quacked11• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

quacked11• 5 years 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.

tweetle_beetle• 5 years ago

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);

I'm not sure I follow. Women don't want casual sex because their potential partners do?

DC13504• 5 years ago

The point is that every woman can easily find casual sex so opting out is a choice.

quacked11• 5 years ago

Everyone with a sex drive wants sex, but they want it from the right person. The heuristics surrounding the "right person" selection process have been destroyed. The women I know who have retreated from dating have almost unanimously expressed frustration with both the poor selection of available men (because their standards have been artificially inflated) and the constant push from the available men for the women to engage in casual sex (the men no longer have meaningful and safe road maps for how relationships should progress).

akamaka2• 5 years ago

If you do know men like this and you disagree with me, please elaborate.

I think your hypothesis is mostly correct, except for the idea that the men who are having more sex are “tremendous specimens”.

I don’t think they need to be especially attractive or powerful. It could be cultural or psychological differences that make some men put more energy into their pursuits. For example, compare Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton.

quacked11• 5 years ago

You just mentioned two of the most powerful and charismatic men in history. Can you elaborate on the comparison?

hirundo• 5 years ago

I have a nephew who looks like Chris Hemsworth and when he travels to a new town, doesn't bother with a hotel. He just shows up at a singles bar and waits for an overnight invitation, and his usual problem is choosing among them. The price he pays for the bed is not burdensome to him.

To him, I'm the strange one for bothering with the hotel. I don't think that the attractiveness 1% are much less oblivious of their privilege than the financial 1%.

Balgair• 5 years ago

To each their own, of course.

But, wow, that's putting oneself at a lot of risk.

Granted, when I was that young, risk wasn't a four-letter-word, so to speak.

quacked11• 5 years ago

In the extreme sports circles I run in we call them "hobosexuals".

testfoobar4• 5 years ago

I agree with you to a point. "could I get a better mate" is absolutely true when you can swipe across hundreds of profiles.

Where it is not true is that attraction is a multi-dimensional process that is very poorly captured by online dating. Men in particular are disadvantaged by it. This is well studied.

The false conclusion to draw is that if you fail at online dating, you will fail at real life dating. This false conclusion stops many young men from even trying in the real world. There are so many dimensions on which attraction is developed that many, many who are currently alone could easily and successfully find partners. It makes me sad.

I have absolutely seen 5'4" men who would catastrophically fail in the online dating market meet, date and marry successful, intelligent, kind, beautiful women. I have absolutely seen many nerdy men, goofy men, brown men, asian men succeed effortlessly with women. It all requires real-world interactions though.

In the real world, people respond to so many more signals. You have to go out there, meet people, learn and develop yourself.

This is the process I encourage my single friends to follow: become the person someone else would be thrilled to meet, proud to befriend, excited to date and overjoyed to marry.

But to do so, you must first go out in the real world and make friends. Don't go out with any expectations of getting a date or a hookup. Learn to make friends with a diverse array of people. This is key. Each different type of person will help you learn about yourself.

Dating will emerge naturally as you get beter at making friends.

PrefixKitten• 5 years ago

become the person someone else would be thrilled to meet, proud to befriend, excited to date and overjoyed to marry.

The 3 most recent exes of mine all had begged me to marry them at some point in the relationship. One even offered to buy me a ring and propose.

But in the last 6 years I haven't had a single relationship... The enormous contrast in outcome has me totally bewildered.

quacked11• 5 years ago

I agree with you that attraction is a multi-dimensional process which is very poorly captured by online dating. What I am trying to explain is mine and others' observations that men who don't succeed at present-day online dating , that would have succeeded at real-life dating in the past, are not succeeding today in real life. I am blaming online dating and social media for this phenomena, and attempting to use that rationale as an explanation for why the percent share of sexless men has grown from 18% to 30%, as indicated by the linked study.

Have you seen these "conventionally unattractive" men that you describe succeed in a totally open and free dating market as young 20-somethings, or are there extenuating circumstances (early 30s, string of failed relationships, etc.). I will fully admit that you are observing something I am not observing and that my rationale must be flawed if you're witnessing 5'4" nerdy, goofy men lacking in charisma and stature experience consistent success in real life dating between 18-26. Of those I saw who did achieve some success, I've witnessed a lot of them get cheated on by their "girlfriends", but I haven't witnessed a lot of them experience free-market success and dating freedom of choice, at least not compared to the 6' high-power athletes I know.

I disagree with you on a few other counts here, but most strongly with the statement "dating will emerge naturally as you get better at making friends". That is patently false. Dating will emerge naturally as the peer-relative superior status of your reproductive and companionship potential becomes obvious. Dating is not a process by which to make friends, it is a process to determine who will have a chance at impregnating whom. "Getting better at making friends" will net you a fraction of the returns that "getting muscles that show through a t-shirt" will, all other things being considered equal.

Overall, I do agree with you that men who fail on dating apps need to try different approaches in real life, though.

testfoobar4• 5 years ago

It is absolutely not true that men who succeed are "tremendous specimens". Sure - some are. But the vast majority are not. It is an erroneous and harmful conclusion to decide that "tremendous specimens" are hoarding all the sex. This false conclusion prevents young men from seeing the actual reality that attraction is multi-faceted and multi-dimensional.

I know any number of guys who are not tremendous specimens who have no trouble at all getting dates or meeting new women for hookups. Each brings something to the table - something that attracts partners. Each guy has learned about themselves and works to develop themselves.

AnIdiotOnTheNet7• 5 years ago

This false conclusion prevents young men from seeing the actual reality that attraction is multi-faceted and multi-dimensional.

The thing is that nowadays the expectation is that you date using an app, and the apps are absolutely 100% one dimensional single-faceted gamified systems. Ideally the solution is to stop using apps, but the problem people run into there is that they don't really know how to interact any other way because they never learned.

NikolaeVarius• 5 years ago

Internet 2D is easier

liquidify• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

perardi• 5 years 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• 5 years 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?

WrtCdEvrydy2• 5 years ago

The answer could be that women are just choosing better men in the apps and just becoming the 13th girl in his roster.

bradlys2• 5 years 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.

durnygbur5• 5 years 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.

DC13504• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

SwiftyBug• 5 years 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.

ziml77• 5 years 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.

hardwaresofton• 5 years 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• 5 years 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...

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...

seneca3• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

MattGaiser3• 5 years ago

50% of men that have lived ever reproduced.

I found something similar:

https://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/is-there-any....

mrkramer2• 5 years 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.

Dirlewanger2• 5 years 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.

clydethefrog2• 5 years 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

krallistic• 5 years 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...?

kar5pt5• 5 years 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).

seneca3• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

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