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Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

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Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#51

Post by ronnier »

EliRivers wrote: post #41
ronnier wrote: post #35

The world is changing rapidly. The magic year of 2012 is when Tinder was release and then grew rapidly. Move forward to today: a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market (not by choice), they do not have sex, they have no hope of getting into a relationship. The reverse is not true for women, who have countless options and can at any time open their phone and have their pick of men. In gener…

a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market, they do not have sex, they have no hope of getting into a relationship Well perhaps if they were in the dating market, they'd have a bit more hope of a relationship. This is like not buying a lottery ticket and then complaining about not winning. This is both true - if you don't enter a competition you simply can't win - and unpopular.

It’s not by choice that they are not in the dating market. Nobody buys what they have to offer.

Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#52

Post by semiotagonal »

myspy wrote: post #43
ronnier wrote: post #35

The world is changing rapidly. The magic year of 2012 is when Tinder was release and then grew rapidly. Move forward to today: a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market (not by choice), they do not have sex, they have no hope of getting into a relationship. The reverse is not true for women, who have countless options and can at any time open their phone and have their pick of men. In gener…

Well then, time to relocate and try the good old speaking to a girl instead of going through an app. Edit: woah, that's going down fast, what's the matter here? Are you expecting that girls should come where you live and do as you please?

Seriously, did no one learn the lesson of Captain Kirk and the Kobayashi Maru? When faced with impossible odds, redefine the problem.

Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#53

Post by mellosouls »

ronnier wrote: post #35

The world is changing rapidly. The magic year of 2012 is when Tinder was release and then grew rapidly. Move forward to today: a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market (not by choice), they do not have sex, they have no hope of getting into a relationship. The reverse is not true for women, who have countless options and can at any time open their phone and have their pick of men. In gener…

I was going to post similar but hesitated because of just how toxic these discussions can become; the assumption of bad faith or a politically dubious agenda - especially as it has some commonality with themes expressed by some of the often unpleasant and mysoginistic "men's rights" subcultures.

Tinder and the like (yep, the year stood out for me too) creating a magnifier effect on a previously geographically constrained imbalance, funneling a significant percentage of short term hook ups through murky, disease-ridden "alpha male" bottlenecks.

More sexual activity, fewer people (particularly, fewer straight men) doing it.

This theory should be easily falsifiable if the data shows that there isn't a particular decrease in overall male numbers as a percentage compared to female.

Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#54

Post by EliRivers »

ronnier wrote: post #51
EliRivers wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market, they do not have sex, they have no hope of getting into a relationship Well perhaps if they were in the dating market, they'd have a bit more hope of a relationship. This is like not buying a lottery ticket and then complaining about not winning. This is both true - if you don't enter a competition you simply can't win - and unpopular.

It’s not by choice that they are not in the dating market. Nobody buys what they have to offer.

I believe you are conflating "being in the market" with "not being successful in the market".

You said they're not in the market ("totally removed"). If they're not in the market, attempting to make a sale, the odds of ever making sale are zero.

If you're in the market, and nobody is buying, you need to improve your product or target other potential customers. If this was about software or other such, everyone would be all over it with great ideas and helpful comments and suggestions for improvement and so on, but because this is about men having trouble finding a girlfriend, they blame the market and stop trying.

Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#55

Post by guelo »

dev_dull wrote: post #34
guelo wrote: post #22

"In recent years, the agency reports, more than half of local STD programs have experienced budget cuts that led to clinic closures, as well as reduced screening and patient follow-up. "Federal spending has also been curtailed." “In the federal government, there is one dedicated STD funding line, and that is the line item in the appropriation bill funding the division of STD prevention at the CDC,” said David Harvey,…

Blaming this on budget cuts is absurd. There didn't even use to be something such as an "STD clinic", let alone easy access. In many states STD testing is totally free and anonymous. How long has that been around? Besides, have you seen sex education in schools these days? Let's just say it's... comprehensive. Compare that to the 70s, 80s, 90s, ANY other time. Children today go into sexual relationships with way more…

I find it more absurd to think that closing clinics has no effect on the health outcomes of the affected communities.

Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#56

Post by Aloha »

ronnier wrote: post #35

The world is changing rapidly. The magic year of 2012 is when Tinder was release and then grew rapidly. Move forward to today: a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market (not by choice), they do not have sex, they have no hope of getting into a relationship. The reverse is not true for women, who have countless options and can at any time open their phone and have their pick of men. In gener…

> Move forward to today: a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market, they do not have sex, they have no hope of getting into a relationship. The reverse is not true for women, who have countless options and can at any time open their phone and have their pick of men.

I'm very skeptical of this. Attractiveness is sort of a constant across population, and sorts into several bucketed gradients, its not as if there are suddenly a ton more attractive women or unattractive men than there was before 2012 - there does however seem to be fewer situations where people can meet via traditional means however.

Now if you want to argue that non-conventionally beautiful women are not connecting with their counterparts on the male side, that might be a more interesting discussion - but one I dont think that can be proved out with data.

Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#57

Post by sbmthakur »

ronnier wrote: post #35

The world is changing rapidly. The magic year of 2012 is when Tinder was release and then grew rapidly. Move forward to today: a large percentage of men are totally removed from the dating market (not by choice), they do not have sex, they have no hope of getting into a relationship. The reverse is not true for women, who have countless options and can at any time open their phone and have their pick of men. In gener…

That's interesting and I read the same line of thought somewhere else. But doesn't it assume that majority of women choose their sexual partners just based on looks? If yes, then to what extent this is true?

Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#58

Post by robocat »

catalogia wrote: post #33
buboard wrote: post #25

What an interesting X-Ray of the sexual marketplace in the graph. Apparently young men have less than half infections as women (i.e. less than half sexual partners than women do - all things being equal) , but the situation tapers in later age and slightly reverses in the 40s when men have slightly more sexual partners. Other than that, the data shows that the sexless generation is driving itself to extinction. That'…

> " Apparently young men have less than half infections as women (i.e. less than half sexual partners than women do - all things being equal)" All things certainly aren't equal though. There is a very large asymmetry in the chance to contract some STDs (specifically HIV, maybe others as well but I'm not sure.) > In general, receptive sex is riskier than insertive sex. This means that women have a higher risk for gett…

Or men have the same rate, but sampled at 50%: perhaps the symptoms for women are twice as bad?

Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#59

Post by wavefunction »

diego wrote: post #10
simonsarris wrote: post #5

Can't read article but solving this theoretical (and perhaps now real) puzzle is the primary story in the relatively poor book "More Sex is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics" which came out in 2008. Don't bother with the book, it's essentially a lamer freakonomics, but it's interesting that the central story has come up. Basically if you have many to many pairing up (many one person with one or two pa…

And there is a good reason for more one-to-many pairings: more choices. Back in the day less desirable partners had more chances because of proximity. Today it's easier to search for partners (for the same reason it's easier to shop), so more desirable people have more choices.

"more desirable" aka disease-carriers 8D

Re: Public-Health Puzzle: Young People Having Less Sex, Contracting More STDs

#60

Post by dev_dull »

grumple wrote: post #30
dev_dull wrote: post #29

This study is funny to me because there's such obvious answers to the trends: Having less sex: more and more people are putting off marriage. I'm sure happily married couples are leaving even their most promiscuous peers in the dust with their nuptial regularity. Rise in STDs: the risk of unwanted pregnancy is much lower these days then in say, the 60s and 70s allowing for "riskier" sex. Longer time to marriage + hoo…

> I'm sure happily married couples are leaving even their most promiscuous peers in the dust with their nuptial regularity. The traditional wisdom is that this isn't true at all.

Fortunately there's great study and statistics so we don't need to rely on conventional wisdom:

> Married couples have on average sex 5 times a month[1]

Under 30 it's even higher, over 8 times a month. Honestly consider your average 30 year old unmarried coworker. You think they even have the time to go out and get laid that often? That sounds exhausting!

1. https://healthresearchfunding.org/sexless-marriage-statistic...

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