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

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

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 146 posts

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

#71

Post by [deleted] »

ronnier wrote: post #61
Aloha wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Study after study show that women rate the majority of men as unattractive whereas the scale is pretty balanced for men’s views of women attractiveness. In general, there’s no longer social or religious pressure for people to pair off so women flat out don’t pick those unattractive men. Women are the selectors. Men tend to take whatever they can get.

[deleted]

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

#72

Post by EliRivers »

ronnier wrote: post #67
EliRivers wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see unattractive men getting married every day.

It’s a generality, not a solid rule. The statics show this.

So there's no reason for any one individual to look at these statistics and from them deduce that there's no point even trying? If they're just generalities and unattractive men routinely beat these odds, anyone choosing to drop out of the market has only themself to blame.

SF; where people can be convinced they'll beat incredible odds and become tech millionaires (billionaires), but give up on dating because the odds are slightly against them. These are the same people who buy lottery tickets but forego seatbelts, presumably.

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

#73

Post by renox »

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'm not sure that this is a real change, this is already something I noticed when I was young: 'top alpha men' gets all the women and all the other men have nothing.

Edit: note that this may only happen when you're young: older women, by force, are of course less able to be picky. So 'non alpha male' are still able to go in a relationship, but later..

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

#74

Post by tibiapejagala »

Aloha wrote: post #56
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,…

Attractiveness is constant, but how it is perceived might have shifted. I vaguely remember that OkCupid did some "study" that men rate most woman around average attractiveness and the distribution is symmetric, but women rate most men as below average attractiveness and the distribution is skewed towards unattractive.

The post seems to be gone though.

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

#75

Post by seibelj »

kd3 wrote: post #36
grumple wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeah, getting married is a sure way to stop having sex.

Definitely for some people but I still enjoy the company of my wife, every couple is different.

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

#76

Post by UglyToad »

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,…

Yours is one of the few reasonable responses so far (an influx of 'people are lobsters' believers at the moment maybe).

This also correlates with what has happened here in England. Because public health/sexual health is funded by councils at the local level and not the NHS it has borne the brunt of cuts to council budgets. As a result we've seen decreased rates of testing and increased rates of infection [0].

While there's a case to be made that Tinder et al. have something to do with it it seems like the funding view is one with actual data behind it rather than 'all the girls are sleeping with Chads and I'm forever alone' finger pointing.

[0]: https://www.bashh.org/news/news/sexual-health-experts-highli...

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

#77

Post by james-skemp »

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?

Didn't downvote you, especially since I don't have the ability to, but:

"try the good old speaking to a girl instead of going through an app"

I think the issue may be that women are using digital tools to find relationships. Talking to my SO, being friends with a number of women, and reading the news, I can't say I blame them, as it allows them to be the selector on the first contact in a safer environment.

So:

"Are you expecting that girls should come where you live and do as you please?"

No, they probably are trying, and then when you hear that women get a multitude more of messages than men on these platforms, and going by first impressions/looks is generally easier ...

Unless you're suggesting people go out and try to pickup people at the gym, grocery store, and bar. But (being in a relationship I wouldn't know), my assumption is that's generally not what women want at this time. Or at least wasn't when I was getting advice, as a man, a handful of years ago.

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

#78

Post by MrsPeaches »

ronnier wrote: post #61
Aloha wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Study after study show that women rate the majority of men as unattractive whereas the scale is pretty balanced for men’s views of women attractiveness. In general, there’s no longer social or religious pressure for people to pair off so women flat out don’t pick those unattractive men. Women are the selectors. Men tend to take whatever they can get.

Do you have a source for this? Any decent meta-analyses?

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

#79

Post by ronnier »

tibiapejagala wrote: post #74
Aloha wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Attractiveness is constant, but how it is perceived might have shifted. I vaguely remember that OkCupid did some "study" that men rate most woman around average attractiveness and the distribution is symmetric, but women rate most men as below average attractiveness and the distribution is skewed towards unattractive. The post seems to be gone though.

The data was so damning the purged it, basically it said there’s no reason for most men to be on dating sites, which works against Okcupids best interest. There are mirrors.

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

#80

Post by pushcx »

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 (not by choice)

Please don't make up things like this. There's tons of well-researched data available from the CDC and NIH. None of it supports this misogynist conspiracy that men have stopped having sex.

> Regarding opposite-sex sexual behavior, 95.3% of women and 93.5% of men aged 18–44 had ever had any opposite-sex sexual contact.

There are pages of tables in this study alone: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr088.pdf

Sexual activity is slowly declining across the board, and more in young women than young men:

> In 2011–2015, 42.4% of never-married female teenagers (4.0 million) and 44.2% of never-married male teenagers (4.4 million) had had sexual intercourse at least once by the time of the interview (were sexually experienced). These levels of sexual experience among teenagers are similar to those seen in 2002 and 2006–2010 data. Longer-term trends, from 1988 to 2011–2015, show declines in the percentage of teenagers who were sexually experienced.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr104.pdf

Post reply on HN