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Comment by vowelless | Hacker News Reader

My prior is like yours: There are likely different answers to the various points listed above.

Regarding this one:

> Sex probably includes factors of better sexual education. Higher pregnancy rates are seen in populations with no or bad sexual education. Also, you are 'held to the fire' by the state if you get someone pregnant.

It's possible that the easy availability of porn has a lot more to do with this than just fear of pregnancy, which is probably why this is seen across the board (urban, rural, ethnicities, etc) and despite apps like Tinder.

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I would add Tinder as another reason for less sex. You have thousands of posible candidates on your finger prints, why wouldn't you get the perfect one? So people skip most people and only small percent succeed. Before you were in the bar with few less options, darker and with more alcohol, so you were more likely to match someone more real and normal.

I sounds unlikely to me that an app for casual encounters is the reason people have less sex...

The numbers show that 80% of the girls only date the top 20% of the guys. They rate 80% of the guys below average. So an average boy find hard to find a date there. Think this way, before you could have a few opportunities to get a date in a bar, now you have thousands of them before even getting out of the toilet. You think your value is higher than it really is and decide to wait for something that has he same value of you. As this is not possible you end up waiting more for sex. In small towns pre-internet there were more relationships than in cities as they know the pool of candidates is small and fixed. If they waited for the perfect one they would have wait forever.

Sounds like an interesting study, have the source?

If you search in Google you would see people getting those results on tinder, but here I put the study done by okcupid, which probably is more accurate:

https://theblog.okcupid.com/your-looks-and-your-inbox-8715c0...

I think the parent is suggesting that there is the same or more sex, just for fewer people. If you can access a thousand people in your league there is no reason to look outside of it (we're all min-maxing) whereas before you were limited by vicinity.

I understand tinder has become more of a dating app than a quick hook up one these days anyway. At least that's what friends tell me, I prefer getting drunk in a bar the old fashioned way.

>> Less sex

When I was in high school, I had no idea of what STDs looked like. We learned about it in sex-ed but none of us knew tangibly. There were rumors it was like the flu. Now, google "Genital Warts" and you get an up close view in no time. That alone drives far more caution than what I exercised 25yrs ago.

When I was in high school in the 1990s, the web was in its infancy and I did not use it to look up pictures of STDs, but I knew what they were. I got a basic overview in school describing the cause, symptoms, prognosis, treatment and prevention of the most common ones.

My takeaway from that wasn't that sex was too scary to do, but that condoms were a really good idea.

> It's possible that the easy availability of porn has a lot more to do with this than just fear of pregnancy

I'd guess it's a combination of this and the overweight/obesity rate climbing, the venn diagrams between "people who want to sleep with you" and "people you want to sleep with" are probably diverging for many.

> I'd guess it's a combination of this and the overweight/obesity rate climbing

I agree, but for a different reason. Excess fat is an endocrine disruptor: adipose tissue makes Aromatase [1], which converts testosterone -> estrogen.

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

  Adipose tissue is the greatest peripheral 
  source of aromatase in both males and 
  females,[citation needed] contributing 
  to the production of estradiol.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipose_tissue#Physiology (middle

Normal Testosterone levels -> normal libido.

Excess estrogen causes problems for both male & female bodies.

I wonder if obesity is the cause for the multi-generational decline of testosterone levels.

It's probably a factor that can't be denied, just like reduction in fitness levels (e.g. exercise), less physical labor, masculinity shaming, etc.

Yes, I was also thinking porn. Porn and gaming. Gaming and porn. Who needs to drive? Or bother with actual humans?

Humans are by-and-large terrible creatures anyways.

I'd also lean towards your hypothesis since there are many, many contraceptive and anti-STD choices -more than used to be available to other gens.

What? Condoms have been around for a long time. Nothing else is really very effective for STDs.

easily available and much less social stigma

Porn was readily available on the magazine racks at gas stations and less-than-family-oriented bookstores back in the day. Easy enough to get if you wanted it.

No, that is not 'easy enough'. Many people would find that an insurmountable barrier, actually. (I certainly have no desire to walk up to a stranger in public and ask for the means of sexual gratification in exchange for money.)

Sure but only if you didn't mind people knowing you brought porn. Also what you get now is compilations of just the scenes you like, rather than having to fast forward to just the few sections with the milf.

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