Millennials are having less sex than any generation in 60 years | Hacker News Reader

Millennials are having less sex than any generation in 60 years

latimes.com

37 pointsnradov52 comments

Born in '89. I suspect the reason millennials are less sexually active is less related to a disinterest in sex (or whatever the ridiculous claim about consent fears mentioned elsewhere in these comments) and more because of the same major issue that plagues most of my generation: money, or the lack thereof. This is also the primary reason that we're buying less cars, and going on fewer vacations, or whatever indicator of brokeassedness you prefer. We're broke as shit and in a ton of debt: http://slate.me/1udY1Ux. Spoiler alert: it's really hard to get laid when you're living with your parents and a night at Applebee's is a splurge. I'm lucky; I've got relatively little student debt and I write code for a living. I'm doing ok. But I've got lots of friends on or near the wrong side of 30 who are living with multiple roommates in crappy neighborhoods, and lots more who are back home with mom and dad. I've got friends with worthless law degrees from T3 law schools and $200k in debt who work retail. Almost everyone I know, except for some of the trust fund kids, has a frightening amount of student debt. Most have little hope for paying it off. Almost everyone I know came out of college into a labor market with little or no interest in them. Some of the STEM kids, the programmers and doctors and engineers, are going to be ok. Most of the rest are screwed. Somehow I suspect that's got a little more to do with sexual inactivity than any of the stupid ideas proffered in this link or the original study.

You're describing the reality that any observant Millenial lives in. Unfortunately, the spurious trend pieces will continue until Boomers finally grasp that the economy no longer offers the "average" person the same opportunities it did when they were growing up (and will likely never do so again).

In aggregate or on average?

Hot people are getting laid more than ever, and the instant availability of apps like Tinder means an equilibrium is being witnessed -- the top 20% have 80% of sex.

I am willing to argue that the success of these people actively discourages other's from even attempting to participate, effectively intimidating them out of the dating pool. People's confidence is shattered before they even go face-to-face with prospective partners and they self-censor themselves.

Not only that but I am personally witnessing plenty of friends retreating from social life under crushing credit card debt and lackluster employment options -- a sea is retreating and stinking husks of self-loathing are being exposed. Anyone that survives into their 30s with a career intact is usually better off than everybody else while everybody else is relegated to childless self-pity, mild destitution, and self-diagnosed embarrassment.

There is a pall over social media and it's growing, or maybe it's just my circle of friends.

> the top 20% have 80% of sex

Do you have any proof for this? I keep seeing this in RedPill/Incel circles but there's nothing to back it up.

I think this author is missing (or maybe the OTHER article covered it) some very valid points.

I didn't see the first point on this list mentioned once, and I got lost about mid-way through he article in a rage of searching for it...

* AIDS, it started coming out in the 80s, but the time period that it's been the most scary is exactly during the years that many in the covered population segment(s) formed their opinion of the risks of sexual relations.

* Consent is, very dicey.

* Feminism has empowered women, to a degree, but it has not yet achieved true gender equality, nor has it liberated men from traditional gender roles. In many contexts men are still held to the prior rules and even assumed to be at fault/guilty (not that it can't be the case, just that we aren't running a society based on scientifically provable /facts/).

* Economics. The price of housing, a stable job you can expect to exist for a long time, an actual career path in a single location with a single company, a reasonable commute. It's incredibly difficult to find that for one, let alone a pair, and then adding 'good schools' on top?

I can throw my own theories into the stew:

A. Many Americans are overweight or obese. Overweight people are conventionally less attractive and thus less prone to having sex or being in a relationship.

B. Social media permeates all aspects of people's lives. Some people might opt out of having sex or relationships if they didn't want to risk the chance of it showing up on Facebook, Twitter, etc. and getting scolded by Mom and Dad.

C. Poor sexual education in school, usually via fear mongering. There's a bit of satire in the movie Mean Girls (2004) where a sex ed teacher says, "If you have sex, you will get pregnant, and you will die".

I'm not sure if I buy the idea that porn has that much of an impact. Porn in some form has been around for quite a long time.

I would counter C, in that arguably sex education in school is infinity more thorough now than it was 60 years ago. If anything this shows that more sex-ed lowers sex. Also porn 'in some form' has been around for a long time but there is no way you can argue that is has ever been as ubiquitous or insane as it is now.

For point A, some contributing factors that I experience include...

* Insane portion sizes when I eat out.

* If there is a smaller size it feels not worth it (it's not that much smaller, but the cost is still dis-proportionately high, adding a psychological barrier to ordering less)

* I hate leftovers, but I was also given that 'starving children in Africa' speech as a kid... I hate leaving food behind.

* I have a 'desk job' and thus don't get enough exercise.

* American culture is predominantly a car culture, our cities, suburbs, and rural areas are built to that standard.

* I wasn't, really, at all trained in making HEALTHY food as a kid.

* Making healthy food takes some time, or at least a good bit of planning.

* Making food for one means I can't keep the best healthy ingredients around. (Fruits, vegetables, to a degree bread) Even the smaller store sizes are at high risk of going bad before I get them, and they have a cost high enough to make me lust for prepared foods.

* Most of the prepared foods are made to sell on taste, and thus have a lot of what isn't 'healthy' for us.

* We've also, apparently, been on a war against fats, when their common substitute sugar is actually a more insidious enemy.

When I go to the U.S. (from Europe) if I didn't go to a proper restaurant the quality was so bad that I couldn't even eat a little bit of it. I didn't care how big the portion was if it's sh*t fake food with no nutrients.

Addition to A: Obesity also reduces libido

To C: Probably people know more about sex than they used to, not less. Anyway sexual eduction leads to the first sex you have being later in life.

Porn certainly is more accessible and widespread than it has been.

Methinks that this may be because millenials are the first generation with ready universal access to unlimited Internet porn, which only really started in the mid 2000s with the emergence of the tube sites and everyone getting a smartphone.

Over at reddit.com/r/nofap (debatably NSFW) there is actually a non-religious backlash to the whole thing, essentially saying that the key to improving every aspect of one's life is giving up porn.

It was not long ago that a lot of the opposition to Internet porn were claiming it would cause everyone to start having a lot more sex and all the problems coming from that. Apparently not.

Well, it's sort of an interesting thing, right?

I'd suggest that perhaps the confluence causing this is:

1. The people in society historically tasked with making the first moves in courtship having a ready and handy (ha) alternative to expending great effort for sexual gratification.

2. The people in society historically tasked with receiving courtship proposals being exposed to a vast marketplace via online dating and mass media and devaluing local suitors.

3. The people in society historically tasked with receiving courtship proposals being bombarded constantly with messages of fear and victimization, to the point where any suitor is often seen first as a threat.

At least for people who are primarily socialized online and on social media, say Millennial college students today and five years ago, there is a vast disconnect between how dating and fucking is portrayed and propagandized, and how it is actually practiced.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the political climate yet. Millennials aren't having sex for a very simple reason: the risk is too high. We live in an age where consent can be retroactively withdrawn. If you choose to have a one night stand and you choose your partner poorly, you run a serious risk of becoming a registered sex offender. That's a life sentence. You'll never have a normal job or a normal life after that.

I don't think this really effects people's choices. Anecdotal, but I have not once ever heard of any man in real life stating any real concern this could happen, much less describing it as a reason to avoid sex.

It's an incredibly rare event -- there aren't hordes of women out there having sex and then taking it back and ruining the lives of men. There is a tiny, tiny number of pathological ones who have almost no effect on the behavior or culture of the rest of society. Most people haven't even heard of a single person who it's happened to. And it's always something that happens to someone else, and could never happen to you (you aren't a creepy rapey guy, after all), until it does. It is less likely than unluckily sleeping with someone who has AIDS, and having it transmit to you through a condom, or getting struck by lightning mid-coitus. All totally actionable reasons to avoid sex.

And you almost certainly won't become a sex offender. You could get expelled from your university if you are a student.

That's a rare thing to happen. Rape cases are brought relatively rarely to police. Then only 2–8% of those rape allegations are false [1]. Around 50% of them aren't against persons (so allegations are like "some stranger raped me"). Next you don't need to have sex with someone so that they can accuse you.

I really doubt that there are any persons where this is the main reason they don't have sex. You usually have sex with people that you built up at least a bit of mutual trust and most of the time are in a relationship with.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape

The article should emphasize one little important detail. This is written about millennials in USA. Which only represents 1/10(?) of all millennials out there. If you take everyone (around the world) into account this conclusion might turn upside down. But to this article's point - Career obsessed, medication and anxiety infused young generation in america - somehow I am not surprised.

There is a perfect storm of anti-sexuality forming in our sex-saturated society:

1) Universal, unlimited internet pornography

2) Consent is increasingly problematic

3) Parental guidance has gone from bad to non-existent, replaced by the State, which delivers clinical advice, often via perverts

4) Tinder and friends aggravating the many-females/one-male harem phenomenon, shutting many males out of the sexual market

5) Kids (males, in particular) have no money. Ask Tony Montana about that.

Careful what you wish for, kids. You might just get it.

Good and hard.

And there is also the runaway quality selection. It seems that for a long time there was a trend of fewer children per pair, this is the logical cause and conclusion.

Moreover the societal group ties have disappeared. You can see it as many fewer subcultures and subgroups. Quite a few are virtual (Internet based, not local) and that does not lens itself to relationships. Results in loneliness in crowd, since everyone is a stranger.

> replaced by the State, which delivers clinical advice

Or in a sadly large number of states, religious advice (abstinence only education)

What about the fact that so many people are overweight now?

I have a lot of friends who are overweight, and have horrible dating lives. Most of the people I know at a healthy weight have plenty of sex.

That explanation would still leave open why overweight wouldn't date other overweight people?

The behavior patters that lead to obesity usually go hand in hand with avoiding common hookup/dating spots (i.e clubs). Sitting on the couch eating 3 papa john's pizzas every night does not help you bang anybody, regardless of body type.

Only some overweight people fit that description, I certainly don't. You can be reasonably active, go out, and eat pretty sensibly and still have trouble managing your weight.

Still even the more couchpotato types are sexual people and should naturally end up forming dating scenes even if the theory of segregation turned out to be strongly true, excluding people who lose their libido due to depression etc.

(ftr, I see lots of couples with mixed body types but I'm not a millenial or living in the US)

If you are fat then you are not eating sensibly, regardless of your excuses.

The difference between obese and normal weight could be 100 extra calories per day.

Look at all those "healthy snacks" - a small handful of nuts, a smoothie, a pot of fruit. These are all over 100 calories.

For many people, once you keep a certain weight for a while, your body will try pretty hard to keep you there. This means that your metabolism will slow down if you start doing the straightforward small calorie deficit.

Hence to lose weight you need to keep your calorie deficit at high levels and feel significantly hungry for a very long time.

This comes with a risk of yoyo-ing, which is much worse for you than keeping the same weight since it will put high stress on your insulin/lipid metabolism that causes insulin resistance and type II diabetes. Indeed most overweight people have gone through cycles of yoyo-ing and ended up heavier than what they started with.

TL;DR: if you think obese people are just unusually lazy or weak willed, you aren't getting the picture.

Obviously it doesn't go for every overweight person, but I would imagine not taking care of yourself enough to sustain a healthy body weight also comes with a slew of other problems such as depression, low self esteem, social anxiety, that would hinder a healthy sex life.

Being overweight yourself doesn't change your perception of other overweight people.

TIL that I am a millennial at 35 yo. I thought I was Gen X.

There used to be a Gen Y in the middle there but it disappeared.

Leaving behind a generation gap, one supposes?

This statement has me vividly imagine a world where a very slim age bracket dies off in an isolated event across the globe, leaving a literal generation gap. Anyone want to make a sci-fi fringe movie out of it?

We were. Then people realized "Gen X" was insanely broad, and they split us off into "Gen Y", which never stuck because that was one of the stupidest names ever conceived.

Then it's like none of that ever happened and we're part of the generation who has never known life without the Internet and still don't know what Hammer Pants are.

Don't worry, it's not supposed to make sense. It'll all get redefined again before we're 50.

I know what hammer pants are, barely, as that song was super popular within my memory. I can't recall what they look like, but I know EXACTLY what song they are paired with.

I don't really feel like I'm part of any demographic. Truly a lost generation.

I usually see 1985-2005 ish as the defining birth years of "millennials"

For any living group of people, these labels and boundaries are relatively arbitrary. It will likely evolve over the next few decades (and beyond) as the cultural shifts that occurred become more apparent / distinct.

Ah! A fellow member of the Oregon Trail Generation!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Trail_Generation

Now, this is something I can identitify with! Haha

As I followed the links in the article, and the links those links linked to, I noticed that none of them report the gender breakdown among those who have never had sex.

In the surveys I've seen before, the average number of reported female sexual partners per man did not equal the average number of reported male sexual partners per woman. Men overreport their number of sexual partners; women underreport. This effect could skew the aggregate reported results among the entire population one way or another, depending on other factors.

If the underlying trend is one of increasing inequality in male sexual activity -- fewer men having sex with more women, while women have the same number of sexual encounters overall -- then because fewer men have had sex, the proportion of all people who have never had sex would increase compared to previous generations, even if the average amount of sex across the board actually remained the same as in previous generations.

Some may have observed the increasingly dysfunctional relationships of their parents' generation and decided to opt out.

But that's not a new phenomenon, is it?

I'm not a millenial so maybe the millenials on HN can explain it. I keep reading that millenials don't like human interaction. Things like prefering to wait in line at a kiosk to order food when there is an order taking human available with no waiting. Preference for online ordering a pizza so there is no need to speak to a human order taker on the phone. Stare at social media on a mobile device rather than socialize with physical humans. It's no wonder there's less sex going on.

I used to think it was Facebook and the like that turned an entire generation into social retards. But the effect seems to predate social media.

That's more of an introvert-vs-extrovert thing, rather than an age thing, IMHO.

Ok, but how is it that such a large fraction of an entire generation has become introverted? People whose business it is to pay attention to these kind of things have a lot of data showing that's the case. Andy Puzder, CEO of Hardee's and Carl's Jr says "Millennials like not seeing people"[1] That's based on observing lots of them in their stores.

[1] http://uk.businessinsider.com/millennials-hate-interacting-w...

There's no data in that article, but people have been deriding fast food and retail workers long before the millennial generation came of age.

To be fair, those interactions are really hollow. When your cashier says "How are you?" both sides of the transaction know it's just a courtesy. I would much rather spend my time sending a text to a friend than have an empty conversation with someone I'll never see again and doesn't care. Even if one side made the effort to say something meaningful, what are the odds my cashier has anything interesting or meaningful to me that can be said in the context of a 5 to 30 second interaction?

It's not that they don't value human interaction, it's just that they focus those interactions where it matters.

Born in 1981, a bit early to be called a millenial but not that far. I remember an old hippie referring to us as "the AIDS generation". So afraid of STDs that we refrain from having all the sex we can. It somehow applies.

There seems to be no unifying subculture anymore. See, you can call a person a hippie and be mostly right.

If anything, you could call millennial an Internet user, but that is not a subculture. Other than this there seems to be no unifying force. Even in Great Depression there was one pretty well defined by Jazz and first available movies in cinemas.

Young adults today probably meet and interact with many fewer people in person than most any generation in the past 50+ years. Romantic relationships, especially casual ones, are probably largely the result of meeting lots of people in person. They spend less time around people in general due to social media and whatever else they have. There's also probably some element of narcissism that exists today that didn't previously due to social media (and I apply this to all age groups).

Seems like a pretty simple explanation to me.

This opinion piece started off promisingly, but by the end, I lost track of what point the author was trying to make. Truly, did they merely offer retorts to the people quoted in the referenced WaPo article?

I was expecting an analysis like the first couple paragraphs foreshadowed, not just a 'yeah, well, these people are quirky, but they may have a point here or there'. Does anyone feel the same?

I lost track when the ads popped up... Not sure if the opinion is right though. To me, it seems that most people have sex by sometime in high school

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