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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

So kids are forgoing realworld sex. When did that become a bad thing?

My whole school life I was 'encouraged' to avoid sex, alcohol and every other vice at all costs. Going to a party on a friday night was a bad thing. Sex, whether through disease or pregnancy, would destroy your life. This is still the mantra, although nobody then told me that sex would send me to hell. That part is new. So why are we not surprised that kids today have found something else? Society tells them to avoid sex at all costs. Society is just now winning that conversation.

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This type of social criticism is fan service to people who want to believe they are better than the upcoming generation. If we were having too much sex, there'd be an article saying that too, eliciting the same response from the same people.

see: any article which uses the word "millenials".

Sex is an important part of human relations, to forgo it is to leave out an important part of your personal development in my opinion.

Careful. Sex is an agreement, not a choice. There are lots of people in this world who would like to have sex but for whatever reasons cannot or do not. Abstinence is also a focus of countless religious traditions. I would hesitate to tell any of those people they lacked in personal development.

Personally, I think it is crucial in personal development because, as you put it, it is an agreement, not a choice. There are some lessons to be learned from getting somebody to agree with you on something.

Certainly. However, there are many things where people are expected to reach agreement. It's not clear that this has to be the matter on which they learn it.

Indeed, considering the harm that can result, it's probably better if they learn to reach agreement on some other matter first.

Can you elaborate? There is potential risk of harm resulting for many other areas of personal developments as well.

Specifically on risks of harm? Sure:

Faults in agreement include parties generating agreement that doesn't reflect their values and/or desires, and the illusion of agreement by one or both parties.

While there is potential risk of harm in many other areas of development - including other areas of agreement - the stakes are not usually so high. Getting an illusion of agreement for what movie to see, what restaurant to eat at, or (at a younger age) what toy to play with, will tend to have less severe consequences than an illusion of agreement over whether to sleep with someone.

It is not clear that someone gains the most from risking the most. Why is an agreement over sex the defining developmental step of the skill? Especially since there are so many easy ways to reach such an agreement if you're not particularly picky. (I believe the classical example is, 'You give me money and I sleep with you.')

Agreement are choices. When people have sex, they choose to agree to do so, hence the importance of consent.

I disagree that it is invalid to suggest that those who abstain from having sex due to reasons such as religious traditions lack certain aspects of personal development. For example, there are studies that show a clear correlation between abstinence education and _higher_ rates of teen pregnancy [1] and STI transmission rates [2].

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/

[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20378905

I doubt too many people will become permanently celibate due to porn. But they might forego a random risky encounter with a stranger in favour of ten minutes with tube-something. That seems like a win.

Future sexbots, on the other hand...

What you're talking about is puritanism or something like it. That's different from saying that the sexual needs of people should be emulated with porn. Even if the consequences are similar – less real sex with people and thus functional abstinence – I think puritans were more concerned with the timing and focus of sexual thoughts, i.e. control, over just indulging the whim without sophistication.

A bit handwavy but I'm mainly trying to say that different things are different.

The danger is not that teenagers are avoiding real world sex, but that they have unrealistic ideas about sex. Kids see graphic sex and think that is how it's done. Consequently girls are subjected to unrealistic expectations and learn to hate sex. Source: My wife has spoken to many young girls who are the victims of "porn-style" sex.

This is exactly why I'm not so worried about overpopulation or even immortality. In fact, it's going to get a lot "worse" when you know you're immortal. Why would you have kids by 30 or 40 then? Heck, why have kids by your 1,000th anniversary?

There are most likely some people who would want to have kids under those circumstances. To the extent that the traits that lead them to act that way under those circumstances are heritable, either genetically or through parents-raising-kids (some religions are obvious candidates here), these traits would be selected for in subsequent generations. If a supermajority of people lack these traits, the problem may be put off for some generations, but eventually it will make itself felt. That said, I think there are a few possible solutions, and I certainly am in favor of developing immortality.

>So kids are forgoing realworld sex. When did that become a bad thing?

Since the sexual revolution.

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