Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

journals.sagepub.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 265 posts

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#111

Post by akamaka »

quacked wrote: post #46

Modern casual sexual encounters are assessed purely on subjective ratings of the opposite party's sexual attractiveness (secondary sexual characteristics, behavior, social status, etc.). Furthermore, constant saturation into the full range of these behaviors and characteristics across humanity through the internet and dating applications creates a endless "could I get a better mate?" feedback loop in the minds of bot…

> If you do know men like this and you disagree with me, please elaborate.

I think your hypothesis is mostly correct, except for the idea that the men who are having more sex are “tremendous specimens”.

I don’t think they need to be especially attractive or powerful. It could be cultural or psychological differences that make some men put more energy into their pursuits. For example, compare Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton.

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#113

Post by caymanjim »

shams93 wrote: post #12

The key is more people forced to live with parents this doesn't just effect young people 78% of GenX are still forced to live at home. We have a society that is profoundly broken in so many ways.

This number is clearly wrong on its face. And in the case of GenXers, regardless of what percentage are living with their parents, I suspect the majority of those arrangements are that the parent is living with the child because the parent needs support, not the other way around.

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#114

Post by quacked »

tweetle_beetle wrote: post #92
quacked wrote: post #46

Modern casual sexual encounters are assessed purely on subjective ratings of the opposite party's sexual attractiveness (secondary sexual characteristics, behavior, social status, etc.). Furthermore, constant saturation into the full range of these behaviors and characteristics across humanity through the internet and dating applications creates a endless "could I get a better mate?" feedback loop in the minds of bot…

> The women tend to retreat from casual sex because they don't want it (and not only because the pickings are subjectively slim, but also because the expectations for them to 'put out' are very high); I'm not sure I follow. Women don't want casual sex because their potential partners do?

Everyone with a sex drive wants sex, but they want it from the right person. The heuristics surrounding the "right person" selection process have been destroyed. The women I know who have retreated from dating have almost unanimously expressed frustration with both the poor selection of available men (because their standards have been artificially inflated) and the constant push from the available men for the women to engage in casual sex (the men no longer have meaningful and safe road maps for how relationships should progress).

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#115

Post by SwiftyBug »

zeryx wrote: post #94

My thought; not a scientist and this is all conjecture, but a potential other cause than what other folks are mentioning: Consent conversations and alcohol can be quite confusing and scary to navigate now. This seems to suggest to me, that people are just not putting themselves in situations where casual sex might be more possible (alcohol + parties, etc) due to the fear of it being labelled as rape.

I'd go even further and suggest that men are now more self-conscious about merely approaching women, even on appropriate places and occasions, because they don't want to come off as a harasser.

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#116

Post by Beaver117 »

ovi256 wrote: post #53
nlbrown wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite surprised to see that the leading theories in many of these studies revolve around competing forms of entertainment. I'm personally more concerned with how economic difficulty, mental health, and hormonal imbalances could be causing these sort of changes in society.

This study does not address hormonal changes, but I'd like to see the secular testosterone decline studied. Testosterone directly mediates sexual desire, so that should play a role.

I think this is the reason too. There could be many possible reasons why young men have less testosterone than their ancenstors. Maybe the high child obesity rates? Chemicals in foods?

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#117

Post by nerdjon »

KMag wrote: post #96
nerdjon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am going to push back on this one super hard. yes you should take STD's seriously but to use STD's as your reasoning for not having Casual Sex is the opposite of how you should be handling this. What we need is proper education about protection, risks, and just sex in general not making people afraid of sex! You could just as easily get an STD from the first time you have sex after a date as you could with Casual S…

> You could just as easily get an STD from the first time you have sex after a date as you could with Casual Sex. Maybe, but people willing to have casual sex with you are probably also more willing than the median person to have casual sex with other people, which probably means they're likely to have above median number of lifetime sexual partners. Unless you're arguing that lifetime risk of getting an STD is uncor…

I think it is complicated.

On the one hand there is the person that may have a lot of casual sex but they are also properly educated about sex, they get tested every couple months, they take precautions, etc. Maybe they are more used to having conversations with potential partners about STD's.

On the flip side you may have the person that rarely has sex, never really has those conversations with their peers or doctor and maybe only gets tested during their yearly physical.

And yes I know I am very strongly generalizing here. I know people in both camps that do the opposite of what I am saying here.

So that is why I say that yes obviously more partners increases your chance of getting an STD, but you also can't just say that because someone does not have a lot of partners that you can't also risk getting something from them.

Edit: By properly educated I meant about sex... not anything else. Making that more clear

Second Edit: Regarding the men who have sex with men blood ban, I think that has been proven many times that there is no evidence for it and is purely from a puritanical stance.

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#118

Post by whaaswijk »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #50
bpodgursky wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Young people having casual sex is the natural state of not just civilization, but the entire human species.

No, not really. The modern western form of treating sex primarily as an entertainment activity is very much a new thing. Previously we had marriage and other cultural practices that aimed to channel these forces in productive directions. Now we just have PornHub and Tinder.

I’m not a historian but aren’t those tightly controlled cultural practices a relatively modern invention? Certainly the ancients were known to have orgies (presumably for fun). People have observed how the 20th century was for many people a return to their “true” nature (eg free love, drugs, rave parties). Maybe it’s just always been true that, when their wealth/resources allow for it, people like to have sex for fun.

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#119

Post by quacked »

akamaka wrote: post #111
quacked wrote: post #46

Modern casual sexual encounters are assessed purely on subjective ratings of the opposite party's sexual attractiveness (secondary sexual characteristics, behavior, social status, etc.). Furthermore, constant saturation into the full range of these behaviors and characteristics across humanity through the internet and dating applications creates a endless "could I get a better mate?" feedback loop in the minds of bot…

> If you do know men like this and you disagree with me, please elaborate. I think your hypothesis is mostly correct, except for the idea that the men who are having more sex are “tremendous specimens”. I don’t think they need to be especially attractive or powerful. It could be cultural or psychological differences that make some men put more energy into their pursuits. For example, compare Jimmy Carter to Bill Clin…

You just mentioned two of the most powerful and charismatic men in history. Can you elaborate on the comparison?

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#120

Post by DC1350 »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #106
throwaway8581 wrote: post #26

Many comments are ignoring the most important aspect. The decline is almost all among men not women: > Using a slightly different age range and time frame, Ueda et al. (2020) found that the percentage of sexually inactive men ages 18 to 24 increased from 18.9 percent in 2000–2002 to 30.9 percent in 2016–2018, and the percentage of sexually inactive young women increased from 15.1 percent to 19.1 percent over the same…

This was more or less the purpose of monogamy. If you observe many societies that don’t strongly enforce it, you see that wealthy men end up having tons of wives, while poor men have none. Same situation is happening in America, we just don’t call it polygamy because it has been reduced entirely to the physical act.

The unfortunate reality of sexual freedom is that most men would never be freely chosen for casual sex. The only reason they historically got laid was because of social and economic pressure against women. I don’t think it’s possible to have both gender equality and large scale monogamy.
Post reply on HN