I wish they'd include the idea of "competition in the marketplace for orgasms" alongside these social and economic ideas.<p>People have limited time & energy, so some percent are conceivably putting less effort into the difficult ways of relieving sexual tension (relationships) while favoring the easier ways to do so (pornography).<p>Porn has been one of the first industries to take advantage of technology, and the change in accessibility of porn is unparalleled. It went from something one was forced to sneakily travel to shady locations and physically purchase to something that we are accidentally exposed to or even advertised to on omnipresent screens everywhere in our lives.<p>And that isn't even going into the way the market has selected for 'more potent' forms of pornography- like the way that just about every fetish can be explored to depths that would shock/offend someone who doesn't share it. (something that probably has an isolating effect on relationships)<p>And it also isn't accounting for the new-ish industry of 'relationship replacement' style streamers- another economic activity that I believe must be competing with traditional 1 on 1 relationships.
> The economy is strong.<p>I'm not sure why the author ends on such an optimistic note. Economy isn't great especially for millennials. 80% of Americans as a whole live paycheck to paycheck. Furthermore there are some signs that there will be another recession coming up. If anything these statistics are going to get worse.<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/11/30/672103209/why-arent-millennials-spending-more-they-re-poorer-than-their-parents-fed-says" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2018/11/30/672103209/why-arent-millennia...</a><p><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/millennials-are-much-poorer-than-their-parents-data-show/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbsnews.com/news/millennials-are-much-poorer-tha...</a><p><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/09/shutdown-highlights-that-4-in-5-us-workers-live-paycheck-to-paycheck.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/09/shutdown-highlights-that-4-i...</a><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/05/global-economic-crash-2020-understand-why" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/05/global-econ...</a>
It seems like millennials are avoiding partying in general. Alcohol is a factor in a lot of casual sex. Hell, my family got started because two otherwise unattractive people who previously hated each other realized they liked to get drunk on cheap wine and play with each others' naughty bits. A baby was conceived and a family was started out of guilt. Alcohol plays a big role in breaking down people's inhibitions and insecurities. Now that the combination of alcohol and sex are considered verboten, you lose one of the most effective aphrodisiacs and social lubricants.<p>I'm curious if whatever is behind our lowering sperm counts is also playing a role in this.<p>Given the experience of my fiancee, a millennial who gave up on guys her own age, it seems like the guys who are sexually active(i.e. the ones not stuck on video games and smoking weed), are creeps and philanderers. Hook-up apps and technologically fueled cheating have definitely reduced the mystique behind committed, monogamous relationships among kids these days.<p>Also, title is misspelled. Two n's in millennials.
First off, I'm not making any judgments here -- every generation has its problems.<p>If I had to guess, I would say that a significant part of this phenomenon is tied to status concerns. Compared to Gen X, more people from the millennial generation appear to be openly obsessed with status. (Gen X cared about status, too, but from what I have seen it was considered "uncool" to care about status as an Xer, so you had to have some subtlety about how you obtained it.) Obsession with status is tolerated and even encouraged by peers, and is further reinforced by social networks and group dynamics.<p>* Flirt with someone who rejects you? You lose status.<p>* Seen by peers with someone of potentially lower status? You lose status.<p>* Hook up with someone when there are negative rumors about them? You lose status.<p>* Make out with someone who rejected a friend? You damage that relationship and either gain or lose status based on mysterious dynamics.<p>Status is felt as an invisible currency that affects your prospects for friendships, relationships, and your career. As such, losing it is seen as worse than an equivalent monetary loss. It's almost equivalent to "losing face" in East Asian countries, although the consequences are not quite as severe.<p>I would argue that there is actually an ongoing "status bubble" and that people are <i>overestimating</i> the value of status -- surely it can't be worth all that. For single people, though, it can be hard to drop out of the status game. Who wants to be seen as a "loser"?<p>Edit: I didn't really account for the gender disparity here, I've got some vague ideas but this was already treading too deep into speculation. Anyway, I don't think this can be fully explained by #MeToo concerns.
It could also be due to the millennial generation being pickier about who we have sex with. Consider this graph [1] from Datacalysm. It displays the number of messages received by attractiveness. The more attractive an individual, the more messages they receive. There's also another graph [2] that splits this data by gender.<p>There is a pretty significant drop around the 85% mark for women. Which means that the bottom 80% of men are competing for the top 10% of women when meeting through online dating apps.<p>In a world where a more attractive individual is only a swipe away, it's much more likely that the less attractive individuals are getting far less sex.<p>This is just attractiveness. Consider other elements, like family pressures, possibilities of lawsuits / accusations (#MeToo), and other modern issues around sex. No wonder folks are spending less time hooking up.<p>[1]: <a href="https://i1.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/dataclysm3.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://i1.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://i.redd.it/09d1ndzeki221.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://i.redd.it/09d1ndzeki221.jpg</a>
Previously a person's mate selection was very geographically constrained. Everyone wanted to date the most attractive person in (school, town, neighborhood).<p>The internet has broadened the pool of potential mates beyond mere geography. Which makes finding a match easier, but makes all the matches nearby seem less desirable, and makes all the long-distance matches difficult. Particularly on a constrained budget.
" The portion of Americans aged 18 to 29 who claim to have had no sex for 12 months has more than doubled in a decade—to 23% last year"<p>Can also be read as "The portion of Americans aged 18 to 29 who have sex has slightly decreased, from 89% to 77%".
There seems to be a lot of different explanations given below, but I can't help but think of:<p>It's all of them, more or less.<p>They've pretty much all come up as a consequence to the internet, whether it be better organisation leading more effective communication of how (some) men make unwanted advances, dissemination of pornography or the paradox of choice in dating. You could probably throw on top of that pile greater entertainment choices that are not pornography, making the payoff for sex just too low when you can get instant gratification now.
>The portion of Americans aged 18 to 29 who <i>claim</i> to have had no sex for 12 months has more than doubled in a decade<p>>almost a threefold rise in the share of men under the age of 30 who <i>claim</i> to be having no sex<p>So are people actually having less sex, or are they just more willing to admit it?
How about too many people think that they deserve somebody too much more attractive than they are?<p>Things like Facebook/Instagram/Tinder give the <i>illusion</i> that there are lots of attractive people out there when, in reality, those attractive people are unavailable to <i>YOU</i> because <i>YOU</i> aren't attractive enough. If you hold out for someone too far above your level, you're going to be waiting a while.<p>This has been documented in college professors. Divorce rates are quite a bit higher among college professors because the abundance of attractive members of the opposite sex makes them less satisfied with their partners even though those youngsters really aren't available to them.
There are a lot of people (such as myself) that grew up poor, so we invest most of our energy into our careers to avoid falling back into poverty. Unfortunately, families are expensive and a great way to ensure you raise another generation in poverty.<p>It's no surprise that people are putting off marriage and starting a family if you don't want to raise children in the same situation you were raised in. It's a similar problem across the pond in Japan where people grew up in practically single-parent households due to the rigors of work potentially leading to Karoshi. So you have people either completely checking out of society, or focusing entirely inwards to avoid a repeat of history.
A WaPo, NYPost & Village Voice alum who was also crab fisherman mentioned... over time, values morph and almost invert entirely:<p>- Upper-case Liberal Democrat become fascist, close-minded and exclusionary<p>- The left becomes a circular firing squad<p>- Republicans become more lower-case liberal<p>- People become atomized from one-another and no longer "disagree without being disagreeable," i.e., it's insults, snark, rhetorical spin doctoring, dismissiveness, censorship and blocking. Oh and power to the most easily offended.<p>- Victim hierarchy inverts power dynamics, rather than delivering equity for all, due to prevalence of mandatory equality of outcome.<p>In general, I think people have fashionablized and cargo-culted philosophical and political positions rather than maintained, mentored, practiced and restored them to their past meanings and values. Maybe it's partially due to the breakdown in social accountability because of mobile populations and partial anonymity/mostly unregulated nature of social media.
Interesting read, but I wish that the writer would conjecture beyond the experience of a non-representative minority (kids who attend top 25 colleges).
If you're trying to explain changes in the average of a binary valued distribution, you should focus on the middle 80% of the population.
Less sex, and more porn most likely.<p>I think plenty of people fulfill their sexual needs through online means these days, which is a shame because real life experiences are much more emotionally enriching, with the added benefit that if you repeatedly engage sexually with a person you really like, it could form the basis of a relationship. Whereas in the digital space, one gets no long term return on the time invested/wasted.
I think it’s a number of things. For one, we have less free time to be social, we’re under more stress, social media is warping expectations and self-esteem, dating costs more than for prior generations, STDs and awareness of them, partisanship and people actually not wanting to date people with differing political opinions, and on and on.
> Many considered the prospect of chatting someone up in a bar not merely daunting but possibly offensive. “Revealing that your intention in talking to someone is sexual? That’s hairy,” shuddered one man.<p>When I read things like this, I can't understand whether american culture has gotten weirdly puritan or this is a wild exaggeration. There's such a huge distance between politely and respectfully expressing sexual interest in someone, especially in a BAR, and being creepy and offensive.<p>Edit: just to clarify, I've never lived in US or in countries in the similar #metoo zeitgest, so this is an uneducated view from the outside.
I wonder if dating apps contribute to a "paradox of choice".<p>The book by Aziz Anzari "Modern Dating" suggests this may be a factor.
You don't really need real physical sex with all the associated risks and overheads when quality porn has become so abundant and readily accessible.<p>A half hour spent on pornhub vs. dealing with other people while making a diceroll on your health and safety? One is clearly more convenient and costs less by a very wide margin.<p>Unless, of course, you want to make children.