Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

Something I am curious about is the people they interviewed were they in more puritanical areas or did they gather data from a larger geographic area?

Speaking from experience and discussions with my friends (obviously the last year does not count due to Covid)... this is the opposite if what I have seen regardless of gender, sexual orientation, and relationship status. Obviously something can be said for my friend circle likely having similar ideals that I have which makes it more complicated.

That being said I am also in a big city.

See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5621592/

> Not all social influences are positive, however, and overweight young adults in particular are susceptible to the negative effects of weight-related bias [76]. Data indicate that overweight young adults are judged by others to be less likable [77] and less suitable sexual partners [78]—even when those making judgments are overweight themselves [77, 79]. Further, perceived weight-related social control has been linked to body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, and infrequent physical activity among young adults, particularly when this social pressure to lose weight stems from their parents [80].

and: https://oatext.com/Adolescent-obesity-and-its-implications-f...

This line: "On the other hand, sexual inactivity may hinder young adults’ psychosocial development and diminish their physical and emotional gratification (Julian 2018)." is just bizzare. People have done without casual sex for most of human history, I think the young people will be just fine without it.

Bar culture always sucked (and still sucks) and I wasn't pretty enough for Tinder. The music scene I was involved with was fading out and I wasn't part of the core clique anyway.

Would I have liked to go out and meet people to have casual sex with? You bet I would have. But it was such a chore to even put myself in a position where such a thing was even a possibility (make new friends who hosted parties and invited single friends? go out and take nicer photos for a dating site?), that it seemed like it wasn't worth the effort.

The flipside is that, while I was at a 4-year university with a nice campus, the setup for making connections for casual sex was a lot better. But I also was a lot more willing to put myself in weird grimy situations, so I don't know if it's a fair comparison.

Moral: beware the direction of causality. Some people aren't having casual sex because they are gaming. Other people are gaming because they aren't having casual sex, whether it's by choice or for lack of opportunity.