Why the world stopped having sex
telegraph.co.uk
telegraph.co.uk
Maybe also the constant drip feed of hormones from screen time.
Edit: also obesity, which is a double-whammy of a) reducing libido, and b) reducing sexual attractiveness
“The romans drank out of lead cups, they were so stupid” as I take a swig of caustic carbonated syrup out of a syrofoam cup that when it was empty smelled like chemicals to the point it would burn your nose a little if you took a big whiff when you opened the box of them.
"In the post hoc analyses, an increase in sexual inactivity and having no sexual partners among men was observed in most sociodemographic subgroups but not among gay or bisexual participants..."
[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
Medical advancements such as the availability of PrEP have been a boon to the gay community, and it's paired with frequent STD testing.
Gay men are exposed to the same environmental hazards, and also have smartphones/social media, so I'm not convinced that's what been slowing down their straight counterparts.
Increased obesity is definitely part of why straight men reject straight women. Mental health is probably the number one reason why straight women reject straight men.
straight women expect straight men to be willing to go to therapy, but also to not need it in the first place
the mental health expectations placed on straight men are unrealistic
meanwhile, gay men see traumatized men and try to claim them. There’s a misunderstanding that men who got picked on in school are ripe for gay conversion.
Not all gay men are predators, but hey I’ve been sexually harassed by both straight women and gay men, and it’s definitely more gay men.
I think it comes down to how the different groups perceive mental health difference, and perhaps that gay men feel safer pushing when they’ve already gotten a “no” versus straight women who have more to worry about regarding their safety.
If declining mental health was the reason straight men weren’t having sex, we’d expect to see the same/worse declines for gay/bi men too.
[1] https://www.samhsa.gov/newsroom/press-announcements/20230613...
I think the social dynamics are different between het/hom groups
The faux unconditional acceptance offers solace, often to marginalised people that haven't received it from anywhere else.
You either are gay, are lesbian, are bi, are trans etc or you're not and opting in to all the social bullying outside of the sub-10% LGBT (who themselves are not that united) who will now supportive on principle makes very little sense.
These issues among LGBT people map pretty much exactly to the pattern of mental illness and substance abuse that exist in every minority out-group. Far more likely that this very obvious explanation is the true one.
You’re edging toward doing the very thing: claiming.
If you want cis-het men to be cool and accepting, just accept the ones who are cool and accepting. Don’t get paranoid about why they’re hanging out.
I just hate bullies.
Chiming in to drop the anti-anecdote, I have literally never experienced this to be the case, I don't know a single gay person interested in "converting" others.
In my experience gay men know what dating or sleeping with a "traumatized man" is like because a lot of closeted men are like that, we do not seek to claim that at all.
I got no hate. I would protect the queer community if it ever came down to it.
100 years ago, what was a couple likely doing for entertainment at 10 PM on a Saturday? What about now?
Governments will need to switch off the signal on Saturday nights to ensure survival of the population (looking at World Bank fertility statistics increases the concern raised in the article).
And you raise the bar for conversations to be worthwhile. Which becomes a problem when a lot of high-quality conversations start from mindless small talk.
It's known as phubbing and is detrimental to a good conversation.
Most people probably went to bed earlier though.
Internet was only a thing rich kids had. Hobbies were for older people. If you were young and wanted to be entertained you would go hang out with your friends, go ride a bike, or go to the mall. All of these were fairly social activities.
A lot of my schoolmates had hobbies or things they did after work.
In 1924, you would not be hanging around alone as an unmarried couple all that much for example. And you fairly often lived in much more crowded housing situation. Unmarried parenthood was a big deal back then and anticonception was not exactly easy to get or trustworthy.
My own grandmother told me how she married my horrible grandfather at 19 because she was 1) Horny and 2) Was not allowed to have sex with anyone until she got married.
We were not multiplying exponentially all the time. And while in some village you would be married at around age of 16, in cities it was often much later.
With men, oftentimes after military service which could take 7 years. Or after then amassed proprties, which easily meant sometimes before 30. There was sex with prostitues, but that one was also profoundly unsafe, the likelihood of STD was not exactly small.
Instead of kids taking advantage of having vast access to knowledge, they watch low effort youtube videos. Parents let them do it because they're just as addicted to tech.
You don't have to go out of your house to go shopping, or work, or even play. We lost all local communities from church, to the office. We live in a dystopia where we spend all day connected to devices.
And now there's AI.
We ALL need to go on a tech diet. Find the good stuff, and keep it, and treat the rest like junk food.. which is fine to have once in a while, but the moderation is key.
No tech, no humans.
Modern tech is what saved us from the dour prophecies of the Malthusians.
A little bit of screentime sure does beat infant mortality, polio, hunger, and the global wars we used to have.
That's the key
Tech has been amazing for the past 100-150 millennia and couldn’t possibly be seen as detrimental in aggregate. We are in fact smarter and more connected too. The side effects are barely worth mentioning.
Agriculture and urbandwelling are only 10,000 years old. The railroad, telegraph, and electricity all are less than 200 years old.
Not enough time to evolve adaptation to it.
Maybe in a million years if we're still around we'll be well adapted to long distance instant communications, to travel faster than 10 mph, etc. But those of us who are fated to live now are stuck with dangerous technologies with scary tradeoffs.
> A little bit of screentime sure does beat infant mortality, polio, hunger, and the global wars we used to have.
Bizarre take. Don't you remember the 1990s? The technology to bring those boons was unrelated to, and preceded, the screentime boom. TV was popular of course, but it was the beer to the smartphone's gin. Quantity has a quality all its own. It was, from my own memory, far easier to be TV-less or nearly TV-less than it is to be offline today.
In fact, we've regressed a little in terms of war and disease lately, and I wonder if the cultural regression caused by addictive feeds on smartphones, which prioritize controversy above all else, has at least a little to do with it. I really don't think responding to covid in the USA would have been such a disaster if it had happened in say, 2005.
I agree with all this and yet it’s the sheer force of your prose that I can’t let go of
Not just the internet, but television as well.
I'm seeing a few signs that people are ripping themselves free of their screens and getting out more. I'll see kids on bikes any time the weather is decent, and on the bike trail more parents have their kids on bikes these days than in trailers.
> We lost all local communities from church, to the office.
If we do nothing to preserve these things, they will go away. Find a church that fits your beliefs and join. Get involved in the activities. Do you sing or play a musical instrument? Music has been a lifesaver for me.
Tech causes us to give up on self-work but increases our standards for others.
Not getting enough dates? Statistically speaking, what you need to do is probably obvious: go to the gym, go to therapy, go outside.
A dry spell doesn’t make you bad. Rejecting others doesn’t make you bad. Only sleeping with people you actually want to sleep with is okay.
People will try to shame you for rejecting others. People will try to feed your insecurity about not having enough sex. Bitter people will try to manipulate you into sex.
Work on yourself. Ignore bitter people.
I don't think we can make a blanket statement like that.
Technology does connect us, makes us smarter, give us vast access to knowledge, etc. And yes, it also enables the bad habits. There are 8 billion of us. Of course technology won't have the same effect on everyone. And would a world without technology be not detrimental to humanity, i.e., for the 8 billion of us as a whole?
It was the first thought that occurred to me: maybe we aren't having less sex, but we are simply more honest about it.
But the article makes even the above statement in support of the title: maybe journalism needs more honesty too?
Perhaps the gp meant that today there is less stigma associated with not having sex so people don't exaggerate how much sex they have and more willing to share that they don't have it at all.
At least in the US, a majority of adults are on at least one prescription drug and a large number have two or more. Our diets have also changed to include a much larger proportion of vegetable oils, processed foods, and soy to name a few.
This is wild to me. I find it hard to believe that this is not a bad thing.
I just started a medication for a disease that was just an unlucky roll of the genetic die. Before, my options would have been to just slow decline until I died for a decade. Now. I'll take this for the next 40 or more years of my life. I imagine that was a lot of people before we started having a lot of medicines. Diabetes used to be a death sentence a century ago after all.
That is absolutely true for some, but for some of the most common medications the underlying conditions themselves may be avoidable. Being able to get prescription drugs for short term ailments is extremely beneficial, but short of a truly permanent condition I have to assume quality of life would be better if the drug wasn't deemed medically necessary (meaning it actually wasn't needed, not trying to parse medical diagnoses).
No one is arguing that all prescriptions are the best solution to all problems.
You may have misread my comment, I wasn't arguing against this at all. I was raising that assuming a majority of Americans being prescribed to at least one pharmaceutical isn't really a sign of a higher quality of life.
Your comment sort of needs the assumption that the other poster thinks they are the best solution to all problems and directly indicate quality of life (rather than representing an improvement to quality of life for people on them).
What is still wild to me is that so many people in that age range would suffer without drugs. I would expect more conditions to crop up as people mature but not this soon at this rate.
Some of the most common prescriptions will actually get you deemed unfit for military service. That's not great if the worst happens and we have to stand up a large army.
Both trends have been growing over the last 50 or so years. If the change in diet or medication would directly impact an individual on a short term that wouldn't line up with the data in this article. If the trends accumulate slowly in a person, or if they impact an individual's children, the trends could line up.
Sex drive is an extremely complex topic. By no means am I claiming that these are definitely factors, but the article is pretty light on links for the potential factors it proposes. The idea that, for example, an increase in vegetable oil consumption or even specifically soy could accumulate over time and impact hormonal balances in children isn't out of the question.
More importantly, given how hand-wavy the article is with regards to the factors it raises, ignoring diet, prescription drugs, and overall health seems like a huge miss.
Speaking personally, I had no idea my testosterone levels were low until my wife and I started having arguments over sex, I know it sounds ridiculous but I had close to no libido as a man in his 30s. Even when I was younger I had no desire for sex and just thought it's "the way I am". My wife and I are both Catholics so naturally we don't attribute much value to sex however after a series of frustrating fights, I did some research and figured I should get tested..
When my results came back, I was only at 10nmol/L! After repeating the test multiple times (3 times, before 9AM), my baseline was established at 10-12 nmol/L..
This was _very_ surprising as I have a healthy BMI, exercise regularly (weight lifting + cardio 2x a week) and eat well..
Anyway after being refused by public doctors for TRT (since I'm in the "normal" range), I finally had it. I went to see a private urologist and he immediately put me on HCG + TRT and it has been incredible.. It has been 5 months now and my mood is much better, my libido is like a teenager and I have more energy.
Moral of the story: check your testosterone levels gentlemen!
No, I have no sources for this assumption at hand.
Technology is expert at inflicting radical novelties upon mankind. Nuclear weapons and the pill are examples from the last 50 years; so is in my opinion the automatic computer, and this not so much in its capacity of a tool —in that capacity it causes only a ripple on the surface of our culture— as in its capacity of a challenge that is absolutely without precedent in the history of Mankind.
In my personal experience women who go off the pill have marked increases in libido. Of course that’s anecdotal, but the plural of anecdote is data.
[1] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/E...
It's about topology. Star topologies (e.g. one man and many women) are more spreading of STDs than graphs that have evenly distributed edges.
More total people having sex with more partners brings about fewer STDs due to diffusion.
https://books.google.co.ao/books?id=07sYZRyFXAAC&printsec=fr...
It is also said that porn is more and more violent, so lots of men are not excited in the normal and romantic way of making love (most likely your wife/girlfriend won't let you treat her the way your brain is trained to through porn)
There is also one interesting opinion in that debate (from an author which was not present, but was quoted): when French boys get a bunch of sexual experiences in their adolescence, it is normal they loose that sense of romance and attraction once adult.
The environment is the most likely reason. There are microplastics and endocrine disruptors. My own libido returned to normal once my testosterone level returned to the normal reference range.
Her research indicates that it’s actually women who are more interested in violent sex, and men consistently underestimate the chances.
It’s something like 60% vs 40% IIRC.
That's not the case at all. If you're a normal man, you'll be attracted to a good range of normal, healthy woman bodies, from skinny to curvy. It's biologically programmed into us since God knows how long.
On top of that, sex is 1000 times more about the touch than the looks, when you're actually doing it.
Besides, why do these disturbed french people only talk about the body, when the face is just as important for attraction?
Also, because of dating apps, most women go for the most attractive or successful men. The top men are monopolizing most of the sex.
The narrative of men not finding women attractive enough is not entirely untrue, but that is not the reason. Men are less selective than women.
Building high trust, long term relationships is less likely because there is more people and also people tend to move around more.
It's just Universe 25.
My friend, it is just the opposite.
I’ve had a date end because a woman had a hard requirement to be dommed. No thanks.
I had a woman hint at making a pass at me this New Years. I tried to deflect. She still followed up: “maybe you don’t need chemistry if there’s power”. Made my stomach churn and my jaw drop.
I’m a big guy and porn has taught women to want things from men who look like me, which I have no interest in.
I don’t like being singled out for my appearance.
Another one: I was at a standup performance and the woman on stage directly engaged with me to ask if I’m into buttlicking.
You can do whatever you want with consent. Not okay to proposition your kinks without getting a yes first.
I want the women I’m with to enjoy themselves and will work with that. Going down is no problem.
Some people just like love and sex without the extreme porn kinks.
Fewer couples are being formed. In the past marriage was often tied to family reasons e.g. to gain influence, wealth, power or something else. It was decided by parents or family. You're forced to start a family.
I've found personally that generally speaking, my sex life/ability to meet and pursue relationships with women is somewhat inversely correlated with porn use, and hence generally avoid it :)
France has a very large Muslim population, larger than decades ago due to growth of families and immigration. Surely a more conservative cultural norm has played a role.
People like to reduce to a single factor: it's porn. It's careers. It's the high cost of living. It's micro plastics. It's low T. It's diet. It's this or that.
There are probably many things.
Note however that we all are bringing our biases into the picture when we select for One master cause.
What? If this is correct (I doubt it) this alone sounds extremely worrying, also because it indicates that it's mostly a problem with the new generation. It's a 5-fold increase from 18 years ago.
There is a word we throw around casually that has always been a part of teenage life. It does however seem to be increasing exponentially and it’s behind a lot of these trends.
“anxiety” https://medium.com/swlh/american-teens-are-driving-less-and-...
> Financial, legal, and technological changes are all part of the equation
And anxiety seems like a perfectly rational response to driving a 1500kg oversized killing machine.
If I had to choose between anxious drivers and the overconfident who speed and run red lights, I would take the former
It's not as if cars were safer during the "Unsafe at Any Speed" era. Why anxiety now and not then?
Not sure I accept the premise there was no anxiety then.
But different generations think differently. Previous generations thought slavery was OK and accusing people of being witches a totally valid criticism.
I can't really speak to the USA in that era as I'm neither old enough nor have I ever lived there.But I know the 60s and 70s was intensely car-focussed. Incredible amount of resources were thrown at forming a car-owning population. Maybe the marketing and widespread acceptance made people feel better about driving? Vehicular laws were more relaxed? Marketing telling people it was safe (governments hadn't caught up to counter the marketing)? Could be many reasons
It’s not like anything significant has happened transportation-wise to replace driving. If kids don’t want to drive it means they care a lot less about meeting up with other kids.
The point is those face to face interactions don’t seem to be happening the way they used to.
Sex isn’t going to happen if people don’t interact with each other. It’s all symptoms of the same “disease” (which seems to be or be strongly associated to anxiety).
We're actually turning into a type of polygamous society where one in three (or less) men have sex have multiple simultaneous partners and the other men have none.
Also STD rates are going up very significantly among those who are having sex.
So it is a problem, but it isn't obvious what solving it looks like. Even if it is irregular, it might actually be a win for humanity.
Before screens, if you are bored you go out and hang out with other people.
And the push-pull of romance is entertaining, the sex and the physical activity is a huge rush of hormones to the brain.
But we can get a similar rush of hormones on demand by visiting any porn site.
Even if only the men should be affected by porn (mis)use, we already have some within 50% of the target group who no longer have desire to have sex.
Or in another words: No drive.
I don't know the effects of porn on womens