Why are young people having so little sex? (2018)

This article is filled with baseless pseudoscience and random cultural anxiety, and without any real substance the article just ties all of it to this phenomenon that isn't even really definitively bad. People look at anything different about teenagers and young adults, and this becomes an opportunity to air out every single grievance we have with younger cultures, even though we often have zero evidence that there's any causal link between our anxiety and the result exists, or even that the end result is itself bad.

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Oh, young people have less sex? This is definitely a problem, and judging by the article and some of the comments I'm seeing around it, the cause is:

- Too much hookup culture.

- Not enough hookup culture, nobody is hitting on each other anymore.

- The hookup culture is in the wrong place, people don't meet up in bars anymore.

- Those darn dating apps. You can't form a connection on a screen.

- Sexting doesn't count, but also why aren't people sexting enough?

- Young people just don't know how to shake someone's hand and look them in the eye anymore.

- They'd rather play video games, and the idea someone might like a video game more than sex causes me emotional stress for some reason.

- They're taking this too seriously, they expect everyone to be an expert at sex, and their standards are too high.

- They're not taking this seriously enough, the young expect to just be able to do sex really well out of the gate, because complaining about #$X&ing sexual work ethic is apparently where we are as a society.

- Have we tried training them to do sex better?

- Pornography. You know, just in general.

- Women are terrified of men who are bad at sex, and so now we all have to deal with the fallout caused by men who are bad at sex and giving the entire gender a bad name.

- It's the hormones/drugs, are we giving kids too much?

- It's too little chemicals, are they eating right?

- Advertising makes people uncomfortable in their bodies.

- Maybe people feel too comfortable in their bodies? We don't have evidence for this, but let's imagine if it was happening.

- Women aren't asking for specific sex acts that we think they should be asking for. Is it a problem with education, maybe they just don't know those positions/acts feel good? But at least we can all agree that it is definitely a problem that they're not doing sex the way I want them to.

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This is just a laundry list of everything older generations hate about the youth, with a thin premise tied to it to justify interviewing a bunch of people who are all like, "well, instinctively we feel like hitting on someone is now creepy, and we feel that's bad."

But really, you find out that the big objections outside of just general "everything is worse now" sentiments are that it might mean immigration increases to sustain the population, and also Toys R Us is having more trouble. Which... just heck off, now we're going to get mad at Millennials/Gen-Z for not supporting the toy market well enough? Throw in a dash of "it's the younger generation's fault that incels exist" and "the stuff I think is normal some people find creepy" just for flavor.

I want to complain that there's no way to win, that if Gen-Z was having more sex we'd be having the exact same conversation except coming up with reasons why increased sex was bad. But honestly, the specific argument is not the real problem. I just feel like people in the media need to take a chill pill and leave Gen-Z alone. I don't see solid evidence in this article that any of this is a problem, and as long as all of the researchers they interview can talk about their feelings, my feeling is that declining teen pregnancy is probably a good thing, and it's a thing that older generations have wanted for a long time.

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I also can't even begin to express how frustrating paragraphs like this are:

> Humans’ sexual behavior is one of the things that distinguish us from other species: Unlike most apes, and indeed most animals, humans have sex at times and in configurations that make conception not just unlikely but impossible (during pregnancy, menopause, and other infertile periods; with same-sex partners; using body parts that have never issued babies and never will). As a species, we are “bizarre in our nearly continuous practice of sex,” writes the UCLA professor Jared Diamond, who has studied the evolution of human sexuality. “Along with posture and brain size, sexuality completes the trinity of the decisive aspects in which the ancestors of humans and great apes diverged.” True, nobody ever died of not getting laid, but getting laid has proved adaptive over millions of years: We do it because it is fun, because it bonds us to one another, because it makes us happy.

> A fulfilling sex life is not necessary for a good life, of course, but lots of research confirms that it contributes to one. Having sex is associated not only with happiness, but with a slew of other health benefits. The relationship between sex and wellness, perhaps unsurprisingly, goes both ways: The better off you are, the better off your sex life is, and vice versa. Unfortunately, the converse is true as well. Not having a partner—sexual or romantic—can be both a cause and an effect of discontent. Moreover, as American social institutions have withered, having a life partner has become a stronger predictor than ever of well-being.

There are other animals that have sex for fun. No, the fundamental thing that distinguishes humans from the beasts is not that we wear condoms, come on. There's this tone running through the article of "we're not saying you have to have sex to be emotionally fulfilled as a human being, but we are going to constantly look at you weird and act like you might be emotionally stunted because of it."

I'm aroace, so I may be over-sensitive to this kind of, "we're not saying there's anything wrong with you, we're just going to imply it over and over again" talk, but holy crud, could older generations stop using everyone else's sex life to validate whatever insecurities they have, even for just ten seconds? There's very little substance in this article beyond pop-science and people writing books about mindfulness, and then in very worried tones saying, "but maybe these two things are related, let's consider that." There's so many non-sequiturs and random jumps in logic. It really feels like just an excuse to talk about how the kids these days are all wrong.

There isn't much of a ladder to climb as Millennials are still there to fill the void. Millennials have work experience and work hard.

But there is a notable gap and a Gen Zer is easy to pick from the crowd.

Not all are bad though. In fact many didn't have to struggle like a Millennial did early in life. My first 5 years in the work force was slow moving up the ladder. Entering the workforce in 2008 was not pretty for me.

Problem with GenZ is they didn't eat the flintstone vitamins we Millennial ate, and it shows.

I think, it's simply the patriarchy is crumbling. With virtually mandatory monogamy, women had to see where to get a mate after the "top 20%" were gone, now they simply share the "good ones", whatever that means.

The other side was obviously, the "bottom 80%" of men had to put in less effort, because they just had to wait for the women who didn't get "a good one". And now they wake up and nobody wants them anymore.

To me this is a temporary problem. Men will learn to adapt, and things will get to a less skewed distribution again.

By the way, chocolate cravings due to high estrogen - or some knock-on hormonal effect - are absolutely real.