People are stretched as thin as can be and stressed beyond belief. Then during their free time they are inundated by algorithms that are made to keep them scrolling and to feel as many negative emotions as possible. Then their food is full of hormones and their food wrappers and cosmetics and toiletries are all full of phthalates and microplastics and undisclosed hormone disrupting chemicals. All in a progressively protestant society that increasingly isolates us from one another and shames us for our natural urges and feelings and bodies, all in the name of selling us unnatural solutions for these “problems.”
It’s a mystery though.
It’s not a mystery, it’s social media. This isn’t fucking hard folks.
Also, this study is by a conservative think tank and is biased as hell. They’re trying to force kids to marry young to have a bunch of children for “god’s army.” These “data” showing declining sex rates gives these conservatives fuel for their crusade. This is all also closely linked to the great replacement theory. None of this information should be taken at face value.
Should I invest in sex now that it’s low?
Yes. Put it all on options.
I’ma short that shit to the ground
Like a short was really your choice. You’d love to go long, if you could.
I just find the concept hilarious. Borrow some expensive… sex… to then immediately sell it… then regularly pay lender with small amount of sex as a fee for the sex loan… then when the time is right buy some cheap sex, return sex to lender… and that’s how one gets sex when sex is in decline.
Many animals breed less in captivity. Many do not breed at all. The less people feel a sense of control over their own lives, the weaker the desire to procreate becomes. Even if people use birth control, sex drive is still ultimately a reproductive urge. If you’re a farmer in the 19th century ? You have a great deal of freedom and independence. Mid 20th century American worker? Homes are cheap. Jobs are abundant. Labor rights are strong. You have lots of options on how to earn a living. You have a clear path to getting a home and raising a family on your own terms. Present-day 20 something? You don’t just have roommates in an apartment; you’re actually sharing bedrooms. Or you’re stuck living under your parents’ roof forever, your only hope of home ownership being them passing it on to you. All the jobs available to you don’t come close to providing any kind of independent living, let alone the wages to actually buy a home, start a family, etc. You’re just going to have to run on the wage slave treadmill til you die.
The economy has developed to squeeze ever more out of workers and consumers. We’re psychologically manipulated at every turn. Every business feels like a scam trying to pull one over on you. You can’t even sign up for a gym membership without risking getting caught in dark business practices (their infamous cancellation policies.) People feel and are trapped in a system that they have little to no control over. Politicians only listen to the wealthy. Unions provided some voice to the voiceless for some time, but those have been gutted. People feel like cornered animals. They feel as though the entire system is just on elaborate exercise in thinly veiled slavery meant to extract every last once of the work product of your entire life from you. The wealthy pay you a pittance for your labor and then take all that pittance back in usurious rents. People feel trapped.
Lots of animals refuse to reproduce in captivity. Lots of animals reduce their birth rates under captivity. Why should humans be any different? Why should we be any different than the mice of Universe 25?
I imagine it’s a continuation of the isolation that social media causes.
edit: looked into this a little more and found This medium article. saying there wasn’t much change in the rate of sex weekly for adults in the 90s, and not until the early 2000s when OECD countries started seeing a reduction.
Not sure what to trust but Family Studies is a conservative think-tank so I don’t necessarily trust their data either.
I came to the same conclusion. I don’t doubt that sex is on the decline but whatever data this “Family Studies” collected to graph this is dubious at best. I think I saw a sample size of 2,000, but knowing this has some religious angle, they probably polled at church or something and are only interested in the procreation of the “right” people.
It’s the internet/social media. Not sure why we’re acting like this is a hard one. We are literally replacing real-life interactions with virtual ones—including sex. Wouldn’t be surprised if masturbation rates have drastically increased in that same timeframe.
Women are avoiding men. For all sorts of reasons that I think most of you are aware of. It’s a huge turn off to be with someone who thing you are lower than them. Who thinks you don’t deserve basic human rights.
It’s a huge mood killer.
Women also are feeling like they have the ability to refuse when before they didn’t.
Women are also scared of pregnancy in a way they haven’t been since the fecking 1900s.
Because now, you get pregnant. A doctor will let you die before they will provide medical care if that medical care has any chance of harming a fetus. Even if the fetus is dead.
Women are dying from pregnancy. Women are no longer able to terminate an early pregnancy safely.
Women are scared.
*I realize not every sex encounter is a man and woman. But most of the population is hetero.
It’s a huge turn off to be with someone who thing you are lower than them. Who thinks you don’t deserve basic human rights.
While I don’t disagree with this theory, I wonder why you would think that this is a recent development.
The awareness is relatively recent. “The woman place is in the kitchen” is not an old thing.
Perhaps there is a comfort in expressing these beliefs now when before there was not?
That is what I thought I said, yes.
Can I also add in stress and other environmental factors?
It’s a huge turn off to be with someone who thing you are lower than them. Who thinks you don’t deserve basic human rights.
Are you basing this on dating app matches? It might be a case of survivor bias
To elaborate, what’s possibly happening is that only the assholes of society are the ones having a disproportionate level of exposure/influence on these apps because the good ones cycle out of it quickly enough when they find their viable partners. And then these assholes, who in fact represent a minority of the actual population, end up staining everyone else’s opinions by making them think these people are the majority of peoples’ behaviours.
Digital drugs AI, social media. People replaced sex with mobile phone dopamine hits. Misogyny and misandry in media. Lack of financial stability.
I blame Newt Gingrich
World of Warcraft 😁
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No, women having choice over whether they have sex is the problem. They are naturally less sex-reliant than males and it is only through parties restricting those choices that you see a spike after they leave office. /s
I was warming up the down vote finger so hard until I saw the /s. Got me good.
Yeah, it’s just so sad that it’s believable some people genuinely hold that view
Lack of genuine idle time breeds … non-breeding.
Not enough foreskin in America
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My first question about studies like this is always “how do they know this?”. And I while I know I could find the study and dig into the setsils, I don’t have to do that to know that this is the result of surveys taken over this time period. Unless technology develops to grant us a way to monitor and track the sex lives of people objectively and unobtrusively, that’s just the best way can do. So any conclusions drawn really should be “the decline in people’s surveyed frequency of sexual intercourse has gone down over time”. Just to throw out some baseless speculation: could people in the past inflated their answers to appear “cool” or similar? Could there be cultural shifts pressuring respondents to deflate their numbers now? Personally, I’m inclined to believe the results of the study ARE true, but I’m not confident in that.
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The decline of 3rd spaces, which is a big concept with multiple causes. Car-centric infrastructure, industrialization, women moving to the workforce, capitalism, technology, etc. It has become harder for people to have intimate personal interactions with others who live nearby. I believe the rise of things like social media, dating apps, and now AI companions is less about “hey we developed this new technology to replace and maybe be better than real human interaction” and more about “we need to develop something to replace what we have lost”.
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Consent. Reductions in arranged marriages and child marriages. Protections and rights for women and children.
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Economics. Everyone is overworked and tired. I’ve seen this in a lot of the other comments here but I actually don’t buy into this quite as much. There seems to be an inverse relationship between GDP per capita and birth rate, at least recently. Most of Europe, Japan, Australia, the US, Canada, Korea, and perhaps most notably… China. All have experienced declines in birthrates, and in a lot these cases there is good modern data showing the birth rates changing as these economies develop. The countries having the most children are poorer countries.
Now, it could be that these wealthier countries have access to birth control, so this does not necessarily dissolve economics as a factor. But, my own theory is that sex is one of the cheapest forms of entertainment available to humanity (if you don’t factor in the costs of children). So the citizens of these wealthier countries are spending their time and money doing other things. Not just skii vacations or going yachting, but reading books and watching TV.
From my personal experience, the 3rd spaces is a huge thing. I’ve met my wife in such a space, and pre-Covid I’ve run a large Meetup group that focused on safe socialization (dinners, cinemas, hiking, art events). I’ve seen countless of hookups and dozens of marriages within that group. Covid pretty much killed Meetup groups on our area, so when we want to socialize all that’s left are pubs and clubs, and there I only see single-gender groups with no overlap. I doubt anyone is getting laid, and even if they do, chances of a meaningful relationship before actually knowing each other’s likes and dislikes, and common interests, are minimal.
My husband and I met on OKCupid, definitely not a traditional third space. But we met back in 2014, back when the site was still good. It’s algorithm was actually really good back then if you put the effort into actually filling out the quizzes and surveys. But as time has gone on, it seems they have really enshittified. Instead of helping people finding meaningful relationships, they just try to keep people subscribed for as long as possible. And my husband and I met on OKCupid without ever subscribing for anything; we never gave them a dime.
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The best answer is how anti depressants which at least 20% of those in the USA take ---- depresses the sex drive for both males and females.
No anti-depressants here. I’m depressed as shit. Ladies?
11.4% take anti depressants and between 40-65% experience some degree of sexual dysfunction so even using the highest numbers and assuming that the sexual dysfunction completely eliminates interest in sex (it doesn’t) that would only be 7.41%
That’s some b.s rfk was saying. That’s not the cause. Dysfunction is not the same as low sex drive. It can mean any number of things.
Women are avoiding men. For all sorts of reasons that I think most of you are aware of.
Women also are feeling like they have the ability to refuse when before they didn’t.
Women are also scared of pregnancy in a way they haven’t been since the fecking 1900s.
Because now, you get pregnant. A doctor will let you die before they will provide medical care if that medical care has any chance of harming a fetus. Even if the fetus is dead.
Women are dying from pregnancy. Women are no longer able to terminate an early pregnancy safely.
Women are scared.
trend was before any new abortion bans. You probably cannot consider men avoiding women, but that is likely a larger overall factor.
My wife and I go through hot & cold spells. I think we have similar drives, but our timing doesn’t always match up. I’m more of a “harness the power of the morning wood” sort of fellow. She’s more of a “I want it right now but he’s still at work” sort of gal. We both talk a big game, but work, childcare and adulting conspire against us.
Well, I had my 18th birthday in 1994 and I put everyone off since then.
