Live data from Hacker News

Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

reuters.com

731–740 of 740 posts

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#731
post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the comment I most agree with. We've created a world where there aren't many neutral venues for men and women to get to rub elbows with each other and get to know each other. Combine that with the US's culture of fear and here we are.

This is pure nonsense, there's never been more things to do and places to go to meet people. There are hundreds to thousands of meetups on any given week for any given interest or hobby. If you're not aware of any of these things happening, it's possible that you need to find some interests or hobbies.

Community forms from unplanned interaction. If you need to put every group event on your calendar, you wont ever really reach the level of "community" that I'm describing. What's really needed is a "space" moreso than a "group".

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#732
post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mainstream thought/media is probably 5-10 years behind certain spheres of thought on the web, and it's hilarious.

Not sure if this is what you meant, but I'd correct it to "what is allowed to be said" is probably 5-10 years behind certain spheres of thought. Reuters certainly wouldn't want to alienate readers with something controversial - hence the lack of strong analysis.

Yeah good point. I actually use Reuters as my go-to for that reason, and the ability to get what matters quick and efficiently.

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I correct myself - women aren't sleeping with men to the degree that men would prefer. And if most of the 300 comments in this thread are to be believed, it's because women will only throw themselves wantonly at high earners. Men just need wait long enough so that women's biology will force them to lower their standards. You guys really don't like us do you?

>You guys really don't like us do you? I won't speak for other men, only for myself. Growing up my idea of what a normal relationship look like was 60% not telling the truth, and 40% of bracing yourself for a fight of some kind if you did tell the truth. Sometimes it ended with just angry words but sometimes it escalated. Thing was, if that was what having a partner looks like, to be more terrified about coming home…

I know I'm answering late but I'd like to respond.

I appreciate your perspective, and I'm going to ask you to take another look at it. How much of what you've written is gender-specific? Only the first sentence identifies your gender.

A lot of women could have written something almost identical. This is not about one gender vs. another. This is a human condition of trying and failing to find close relationships.

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

App dating doesn’t work well for a whole lot of people — it‘s really bad if you’re fat, trans, disabled, or even just socially awkward. App culture is about looking for a reason to swipe left rather than finding someone you like and accepting their flaws. It sucks for everyone, it’s just easier for straight cis women under 35 who are able-bodied and of a certain size to get laid.

Appdating was already very popular in the gay scene, so i don't think it only works for straight women under 35.. Furthermore, I think that these apps mostly reflect reality. In the offline world fat people would have a hard time finding dates too. Don't you think?

The gay scene is very different; casual sex is far more normalized so everyone is getting laid more often. Queer dating is its own thing (I'm trans so I've dated as pretty much every gender / orientation at some point in my life). My experience when I was seen as a gay man is that it's actually hard to use the apps for "dating" versus casual sex -- so many people are just looking for sex that you'll just get your heart broken over and over again until you, too lower your expectations and stop hoping for more out of the apps.

The apps simply reflect peoples' superficial preferences. It's way easier to swipe left on a photo of a fat guy than it is to reject a fat guy who you find attractive because he is kind and makes you laugh. Personality really is most of it, but personality doesn't come through in apps.

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#735
post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only way to explain this phenomenon is hypergamy. This statement just does not mesh with the study suggesting the proportion of people getting 0 sex has risen by about 5 percentage point (eyeballing the chart) from 2000 to 2018. Doing some bad-and-wrong-but-making-a-point statistics, if you're getting 0 sex in 2018, the majority of your likelihood of being there was already present in 2000. I'm sure it's harder…

I don't really understand why it isn't consistent with the study. It's entirely possible that people spend a lot more not having sex and waiting for a better partner because these huge dating pools have such a high variance. So people see that there are very favorable targets on the platform, and their perception is skewed, they start to reject the average matches, they want the best. So less sex, more hoping for the…

According to the study, it's, at most, 5 percentage points of the population over the last ~2 decades suffering from this. 5% is a lot of people, but it's hardly an overwhelming effect, is likely driven by other well studied factors like economic stress.

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only true if you believe the people who used to be getting 3+ are now getting 0. This is unlikely to be the case because we don't see the number of people with exactly 2 partners going down.

If some of the 3+ people move to 2 and some of the 2s move to 1s or 0s, then you would see the same exact thing. The data in the study you linked to its entirely consistent with what the OP suggested. We need to know what is happening at the tails to determine whether what you're claiming or what the OP is claiming is true. However, OP has a lot of anecdotal evidence in their favor. The study only provides data for t…

No that's not a possible explanation. Look at the charts for women. 80% of women have just a single partner in a given year and 60% have regular sex every week. This hasn't changed over time. For a hidden exponential right tail to explain this, you would need to believe that women are overwhelmingly switching into weekly, committed relationships with a small number of men and no others. You would also need to believe that these alpha males are bedding all of those women weekly. That doesn't make logistical sense, and isn't the story people are trying to tell either (that a small number of men are doing a different woman every other day and keeping them satisfied and off the market).

These alpha male type men may exist, but they're a drop in the bucket compared to well documented factors like worsening economic conditions.

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that apparently quite a few men have an issue if their wife makes more money than them, probably. Being a provider is generally valued by men, being a romantic fallback not so much.

I've never heard of a man having an issue with a wife that makes more.

It's associated with a higher rate of divorce [0], which most people don't end up enjoying

[0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/can-american-men-ever-be-h...

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some citations for your thesis below. To your last point, IMHO, you're going to continue to see a decline in the total fertility rate (US is roughly ~1.77 this year, lowest on record) as women shift from casual seeking in their 20s to relationship/nesting in their 30s and find the market for partners to be much smaller than they would've anticipated, while also nearing the end of natural fertility (fertility rates st…

Check out some of the women's dating subreddits. The magnitude of sexual activity reported there is staggering.

which ones?

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe tinder isn't reality and many in fact most people meet each other outside of tinder. 78% of women aren't actually chasing the top 20% of men and are in fact available to meet outside of hook ups on tinder. No, Tinder is reality. It's naive to believe that just because it's a platform that facilitates communication and hookup that it's somehow disconnected from reality in it's own little microcosm or niche. All…

The author of the game calls it "a book about scared men who were afraid of women." He also says he himself at the time of writing suffered from mental illness. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/10/neil-st...

That's just so he can sell his new book which is the other side of the coin [0]. It doesn't mean he actually wrote anything inaccurate.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Love-Commitment-Puzzle-Male-ebo...

Re: Young U.S. men having a lot less sex in the 21st century, study shows

#740
post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what variance has to do with it? Thing is, you can always "patch" an X leads to Y theory when faced with opposing evidence by blaming confounding factors. But that is not very scientific. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Sure, you're right (also https://www.gwern.net/Causality#overview-the-current-situati... ) I'm just trying to say that very few things are actually that causal in big complex systems. I'm trying to say that such issues are very likely have many-many factors, and we see an aggregate effect. And so in case of such aggregates arguing for-against them with very simple first-order reasoning is kind of useless. Because eac…

Yes, we can use "very simple first-order reasoning" even when we argue about very complex problems. If you say that "swans are white" it is enough for me to find a single black swan to prove your hypothesis wrong.

That is exactly what is being done here.

Post reply on HN