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Comment by luckylion | Hacker News Reader

> Between 2009 and 2018, the proportion of adolescents reporting no sexual activity, either alone or with partners, rose from 28.8 percent to 44.2 percent among young men and from 49.5 percent in 2009 to 74 percent among young women. [...] These respondents to the confidential survey ranged in age from 14 to 49 years.

"Young" extending to 49 aside ... almost half of American men and three quarters of women have no "partnered sex" and also don't masturbate at all? That sounds implausibly high, am I misunderstanding something?

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That's what I came here to say as well, this simply can't be right.

Apparently these numbers come from a self-reported survey, so either the questioning was vague/confusing, people are not reporting the truth for whatever reason, OR... we're gonna see one hell of a drop in birthrates in the next couple of years.

The full article is linked [1] and I can view it. See Fig. 1 and quoting the actual article:

"Specifically, 28.8% of adolescent men ages 14–17 were categorized in Class 2 (no sexual behaviors) in 2009 compared to 44.2% in 2018. Among adolescent women, 49.5% were categorized in Class 2 in 2009 compared to 74.0% in 2018."

For adults the percentage was much lower -- 3.8% rising to 3.9%.

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-02125-2

44% of men 14-17 aren't jerking it? I don't believe that.

> Young" extending to 49 aside ...

It doesn't. You are misreading the article, which is a bit ambiguously written. The results they are reporting for “young men” and “young women” are, as the first quoted sentence innyour excerpt suggests, gender breakouts of the adolescent (14-17) cohort in the study, not of the full population mentioned in the last sentence (14-49), as clicking through and reading the actual study will confirm.

Ah, thanks, I had clicked through, but stopped at "We used data from 14- to 49-year-old participants in the 2009 and 2018 waves of the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior" :'(

(Beware: HN has some auto-ban-words; words that, when used, will ban you. This includes at least one word pertaining to this topic, and you found one with your post.)

Wow, that’s lame?

Are you predicting that luckylion will be automatically banned as a result of his post above? I don't think this will happen. I don't think are any "auto-ban-words" that will automatically cause a established poster to be banned without moderator review. What makes you believe this?

Do you doubt me? From your tone, and from the downvotes I have recieved, I guess so. However, I saw luckylion’s post in a state of being banned. I vouched for it, and I saw it be unbanned. Furthermore the moderators have described the mechanism, and listed the words as they were at one point:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23258425#23269284

Sorry, I was slow to see this response.

Yes, I continue to doubt that a _user_ will be banned for using one of these words. I'm happy to believe that these words will cause that particular _comment_ to be killed, just that they won't cause a permanent ban for the user.

I think the issue is that we have a difference in terminology. I would never describe vouching as making a comment "unbanned". I think my terminology is correct, but I'll try to be sure before I continue to use it.

I appreciate the link to the list of words.

Oh, yes, I meant that the comment will be banned, not the entire user. Sorry for being unclear.

44.2% of young men not masturbating at all? That's highly implausible. How about self reported numbers are just not reliable for this survey.

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