121–130 of 288 posts
I’ve been gathering data on the natural experiment that occurred due to differences in proliferation of smartphones across countries. The sex surveys aren’t consistent but that is a very strong factor. Look at the hockey stick curve in the paper here.
The rest of the decline is (in my evaluation) best explained with the increase in average age of the 18-64 year old demographic.
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Hmm. Off topic, but I wonder if the reason for your second paragraph isn't your first paragraph. Sex and alcohol both are often escapes, and if you don't have time and energy for one, why would you have time and energy (and money) for the other? Back on topic: You mention "people who aren't putting in any emotional labor to learning and growing as a person". But, from your first paragraph, who's got time and energy f…
> Women's equality has made women who didn't need to depend on a man. As a result, they got a lot choosier about what downsides, flaws, and baggage they were willing to put up with. This would track with how a lot of dating apps, etc are described as "the top 70% of women competing for the top 30% of men"
Time and energy don't exist for _that_ level of casual activity, let alone overpriced and time-expensive in person activities.
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All good points. Work from home isn’t helping us any either. People typically meet their partners at work.
> People typically meet their partners at work. That seems unlikely. Genuinely curious if there’s something I’m missing here.
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> Americans: why isn't anyone having sex anymore?? Also Americans: Abstinence only! You'll get pregnant! No abortions! STDs will kill you! Men deserve sex! We're not going to teach you how your body works! None of that is new in America. If anything, I'd expect that these forces were stronger 20-30 years ago, when sexual activity rates were higher.
Social media and phones with cameras has made a lot of people risk adverse. When a video can hit Twitter or TikTok or Reddit about something that can ruin your life why risk it?
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All good points. Work from home isn’t helping us any either. People typically meet their partners at work.
What 1970s office have you been working at where this is true?
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I don't think the overturning of Roe vs Wade was the key driver in trends which started long before that decision, but there's a big difference between a society where girls marry who they're expected to marry and have sex with him when he expects it and a society where girls get to choose whether to hookup or not and if and when to marry but don't get to choose how they deal with the results...
I take it you’ve never lived in India? Both are true in large part there, at least in the cities. Except Indian politics are at least 10x as crazy as current US politics on the ground, and probably 10x as potentially (violently) serious if someone ‘steps out of line’, so people are better at hiding what is going on.
The article mostly blames pornography and digital addiction, but I think those are symptoms of a larger problem, which is lack of belonging and community. If life sucks, you have few friends you can afford the time or money to see, and you work to make other people rich until you are exhausted, when do you have time and energy to maintain a relationship? If you feel like the world is on fire, it's hard to get in the…
Alcohol, while for some part of the population disastrous, does have a strong socializing effect on people. Recent kurzgesagt: https://youtu.be/aOwmt39L2IQ?t=567 cut - 10 minutes about alcohol being the most deadly drug on earth - "People who drink moderately have more friendships, closer friendships and higher levels of trust in others". Now _moderately_ is the key word here.
We need an approved better alternative. Seriously chemistry exists, we actually have pharmaceuticals that literally are the alcohol with vastly reduced side effects. Still addictive, of course.
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war, disease and famine remove the excess men and makes society less interconnected. Technology makes society more interconnected and puts men in competition with a greater number of their peers. My observation from comparing different societies is that the amount of sex increases as men have greater leverage over women, and vice-versa.
Disease and famine does not "remove excess men". A war removes them when men go fight to other places. If the war is in your country, there are a lot more victims among non fighters - typically 3:1. In WWII it was a lot more. And there, the victims are whoever is physically weaker.
Even so, any event that removes people from society largely indiscriminately of sex, removes excess men for the purpose of this argument. The pool of competition for men is greater than the pool of competition for women.
In other words, the difficulty of male competition increases with population density at a greater rate than the same of female competition. So you expect areas with high population density to have low fertility due to the male disadvantage. Calhoun's rat utopia is one such extreme example.
Humans generally don't interact in person as much with other humans anymore and technology is I think one of the big drivers of this change. From the article: "When it comes to sexlessness (“no sex in the last year”) among young adults, the biggest change comes post-2010." "Between 2010 and 2019, the average time young adults spent with friends in a given week fell by nearly 50%, from 12.8 hours to just 6.5 hours." N…
Smart phones and the ubiquity of internet and video games is really it I think. You never have to be bored anymore, and therefore don’t have to meetup in person to be entertained.
So there was something smooth that hit a phase transition. Likely enployment or housing prices, forcing people to engage survival mode. People in this mode do not feel secure enough to have sex or especially start families.
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So are many other things that are worth doing.