
Millennials are having less sex than any generation in 60 years - nradov
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-millennials-less-sex-20160802-snap-story.html
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trowawee
Born in '89\. I suspect the reason millennials are less sexually active is
less related to a disinterest in sex (or whatever the ridiculous claim about
consent fears mentioned elsewhere in these comments) and more because of the
same major issue that plagues most of my generation: money, or the lack
thereof. This is also the primary reason that we're buying less cars, and
going on fewer vacations, or whatever indicator of brokeassedness you prefer.
We're broke as shit and in a ton of debt:
[http://slate.me/1udY1Ux](http://slate.me/1udY1Ux). Spoiler alert: it's really
hard to get laid when you're living with your parents and a night at
Applebee's is a splurge. I'm lucky; I've got relatively little student debt
and I write code for a living. I'm doing ok. But I've got lots of friends on
or near the wrong side of 30 who are living with multiple roommates in crappy
neighborhoods, and lots more who are back home with mom and dad. I've got
friends with worthless law degrees from T3 law schools and $200k in debt who
work retail. Almost everyone I know, except for some of the trust fund kids,
has a frightening amount of student debt. Most have little hope for paying it
off. Almost everyone I know came out of college into a labor market with
little or no interest in them. Some of the STEM kids, the programmers and
doctors and engineers, are going to be ok. Most of the rest are screwed.
Somehow I suspect that's got a little more to do with sexual inactivity than
any of the stupid ideas proffered in this link or the original study.

~~~
sowhatquestion
You're describing the reality that any observant Millenial lives in.
Unfortunately, the spurious trend pieces will continue until Boomers finally
grasp that the economy no longer offers the "average" person the same
opportunities it did when they were growing up (and will likely never do so
again).

------
ihsw
In aggregate or on average?

Hot people are getting laid more than ever, and the instant availability of
apps like Tinder means an equilibrium is being witnessed -- the top 20% have
80% of sex.

I am willing to argue that the success of these people actively discourages
other's from even attempting to participate, effectively intimidating them out
of the dating pool. People's confidence is shattered before they even go face-
to-face with prospective partners and they self-censor themselves.

Not only that but I am personally witnessing plenty of friends retreating from
social life under crushing credit card debt and lackluster employment options
-- a sea is retreating and stinking husks of self-loathing are being exposed.
Anyone that survives into their 30s with a career intact is usually better off
than everybody else while everybody else is relegated to childless self-pity,
mild destitution, and self-diagnosed embarrassment.

There is a pall over social media and it's growing, or maybe it's just my
circle of friends.

~~~
poloniculmov
> the top 20% have 80% of sex

Do you have any proof for this? I keep seeing this in RedPill/Incel circles
but there's nothing to back it up.

------
mjevans
I think this author is missing (or maybe the OTHER article covered it) some
very valid points.

I didn't see the first point on this list mentioned once, and I got lost about
mid-way through he article in a rage of searching for it...

* AIDS, it started coming out in the 80s, but the time period that it's been the most scary is exactly during the years that many in the covered population segment(s) formed their opinion of the risks of sexual relations.

* Consent is, very dicey.

* Feminism has empowered women, to a degree, but it has not yet achieved true gender equality, nor has it liberated men from traditional gender roles. In many contexts men are still held to the prior rules and even assumed to be at fault/guilty (not that it can't be the case, just that we aren't running a society based on scientifically provable /facts/).

* Economics. The price of housing, a stable job you can expect to exist for a long time, an actual career path in a single location with a single company, a reasonable commute. It's incredibly difficult to find that for one, let alone a pair, and then adding 'good schools' on top?

------
castratikron
I can throw my own theories into the stew:

A. Many Americans are overweight or obese. Overweight people are
conventionally less attractive and thus less prone to having sex or being in a
relationship.

B. Social media permeates all aspects of people's lives. Some people might opt
out of having sex or relationships if they didn't want to risk the chance of
it showing up on Facebook, Twitter, etc. and getting scolded by Mom and Dad.

C. Poor sexual education in school, usually via fear mongering. There's a bit
of satire in the movie Mean Girls (2004) where a sex ed teacher says, "If you
have sex, you will get pregnant, and you will die".

I'm not sure if I buy the idea that porn has that much of an impact. Porn in
some form has been around for quite a long time.

~~~
mjevans
For point A, some contributing factors that I experience include...

* Insane portion sizes when I eat out.

* If there is a smaller size it feels not worth it (it's not that much smaller, but the cost is still dis-proportionately high, adding a psychological barrier to ordering less)

* I hate leftovers, but I was also given that 'starving children in Africa' speech as a kid... I hate leaving food behind.

* I have a 'desk job' and thus don't get enough exercise.

* American culture is predominantly a car culture, our cities, suburbs, and rural areas are built to that standard.

* I wasn't, really, at all trained in making HEALTHY food as a kid.

* Making healthy food takes some time, or at least a good bit of planning.

* Making food for one means I can't keep the best healthy ingredients around. (Fruits, vegetables, to a degree bread) Even the smaller store sizes are at high risk of going bad before I get them, and they have a cost high enough to make me lust for prepared foods.

* Most of the prepared foods are made to sell on taste, and thus have a lot of what isn't 'healthy' for us.

* We've also, apparently, been on a war against fats, when their common substitute sugar is actually a more insidious enemy.

~~~
xiphias
When I go to the U.S. (from Europe) if I didn't go to a proper restaurant the
quality was so bad that I couldn't even eat a little bit of it. I didn't care
how big the portion was if it's sh*t fake food with no nutrients.

------
narrator
Methinks that this may be because millenials are the first generation with
ready universal access to unlimited Internet porn, which only really started
in the mid 2000s with the emergence of the tube sites and everyone getting a
smartphone.

Over at reddit.com/r/nofap (debatably NSFW) there is actually a non-religious
backlash to the whole thing, essentially saying that the key to improving
every aspect of one's life is giving up porn.

~~~
angersock
Well, it's sort of an interesting thing, right?

I'd suggest that perhaps the confluence causing this is:

1\. The people in society historically tasked with making the first moves in
courtship having a ready and handy (ha) alternative to expending great effort
for sexual gratification.

2\. The people in society historically tasked with receiving courtship
proposals being exposed to a vast marketplace via online dating and mass media
and devaluing local suitors.

3\. The people in society historically tasked with receiving courtship
proposals being bombarded constantly with messages of fear and victimization,
to the point where any suitor is often seen first as a threat.

At least for people who are primarily socialized online and on social media,
say Millennial college students today and five years ago, there is a vast
disconnect between how dating and fucking is portrayed and propagandized, and
how it is actually practiced.

------
lj3
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the political climate yet. Millennials
aren't having sex for a very simple reason: the risk is too high. We live in
an age where consent can be retroactively withdrawn. If you choose to have a
one night stand and you choose your partner poorly, you run a serious risk of
becoming a registered sex offender. That's a life sentence. You'll never have
a normal job or a normal life after that.

~~~
wfo
I don't think this really effects people's choices. Anecdotal, but I have not
once ever heard of any man in real life stating any real concern this could
happen, much less describing it as a reason to avoid sex.

It's an incredibly rare event -- there aren't hordes of women out there having
sex and then taking it back and ruining the lives of men. There is a tiny,
tiny number of pathological ones who have almost no effect on the behavior or
culture of the rest of society. Most people haven't even heard of a single
person who it's happened to. And it's always something that happens to someone
else, and could never happen to you (you aren't a creepy rapey guy, after
all), until it does. It is less likely than unluckily sleeping with someone
who has AIDS, and having it transmit to you through a condom, or getting
struck by lightning mid-coitus. All totally actionable reasons to avoid sex.

And you almost certainly won't become a sex offender. You could get expelled
from your university if you are a student.

------
readhn
The article should emphasize one little important detail. This is written
about millennials in USA. Which only represents 1/10(?) of all millennials out
there. If you take everyone (around the world) into account this conclusion
might turn upside down. But to this article's point - Career obsessed,
medication and anxiety infused young generation in america - somehow I am not
surprised.

------
carsongross
There is a perfect storm of anti-sexuality forming in our sex-saturated
society:

1) Universal, unlimited internet pornography

2) Consent is increasingly problematic

3) Parental guidance has gone from bad to non-existent, replaced by the State,
which delivers clinical advice, often via perverts

4) Tinder and friends aggravating the many-females/one-male harem phenomenon,
shutting many males out of the sexual market

5) Kids (males, in particular) have no money. Ask Tony Montana about that.

Careful what you wish for, kids. You might just get it.

Good and hard.

~~~
AstralStorm
And there is also the runaway quality selection. It seems that for a long time
there was a trend of fewer children per pair, this is the logical cause and
conclusion.

Moreover the societal group ties have disappeared. You can see it as many
fewer subcultures and subgroups. Quite a few are virtual (Internet based, not
local) and that does not lens itself to relationships. Results in loneliness
in crowd, since everyone is a stranger.

------
bfuller
What about the fact that so many people are overweight now?

I have a lot of friends who are overweight, and have horrible dating lives.
Most of the people I know at a healthy weight have plenty of sex.

~~~
fulafel
That explanation would still leave open why overweight wouldn't date other
overweight people?

~~~
skyrw
The behavior patters that lead to obesity usually go hand in hand with
avoiding common hookup/dating spots (i.e clubs). Sitting on the couch eating 3
papa john's pizzas every night does not help you bang anybody, regardless of
body type.

~~~
fulafel
Only some overweight people fit that description, I certainly don't. You can
be reasonably active, go out, and eat pretty sensibly and still have trouble
managing your weight.

Still even the more couchpotato types are sexual people and should naturally
end up forming dating scenes even if the theory of segregation turned out to
be strongly true, excluding people who lose their libido due to depression
etc.

(ftr, I see lots of couples with mixed body types but I'm not a millenial or
living in the US)

~~~
skyrw
If you are fat then you are not eating sensibly, regardless of your excuses.

~~~
fulafel
For many people, once you keep a certain weight for a while, your body will
try pretty hard to keep you there. This means that your metabolism will slow
down if you start doing the straightforward small calorie deficit.

Hence to lose weight you need to keep your calorie deficit at high levels and
feel significantly hungry for a very long time.

This comes with a risk of yoyo-ing, which is much worse for you than keeping
the same weight since it will put high stress on your insulin/lipid metabolism
that causes insulin resistance and type II diabetes. Indeed most overweight
people have gone through cycles of yoyo-ing and ended up heavier than what
they started with.

TL;DR: if you think obese people are just unusually lazy or weak willed, you
aren't getting the picture.

------
sethammons
TIL that I am a millennial at 35 yo. I thought I was Gen X.

~~~
ericras
There used to be a Gen Y in the middle there but it disappeared.

~~~
majewsky
This statement has me vividly imagine a world where a very slim age bracket
dies off in an isolated event across the globe, leaving a literal generation
gap. Anyone want to make a sci-fi fringe movie out of it?

------
DalekBaldwin
As I followed the links in the article, and the links those links linked to, I
noticed that none of them report the gender breakdown among those who have
never had sex.

In the surveys I've seen before, the average number of reported female sexual
partners per man did not equal the average number of reported male sexual
partners per woman. Men overreport their number of sexual partners; women
underreport. This effect could skew the aggregate reported results among the
entire population one way or another, depending on other factors.

If the underlying trend is one of increasing inequality in male sexual
activity -- fewer men having sex with more women, while women have the same
number of sexual encounters overall -- then because fewer men have had sex,
the proportion of all people who have never had sex would increase compared to
previous generations, even if the average amount of sex across the board
actually remained the same as in previous generations.

------
ams6110
Some may have observed the increasingly dysfunctional relationships of their
parents' generation and decided to opt out.

~~~
majewsky
But that's not a new phenomenon, is it?

------
geomark
I'm not a millenial so maybe the millenials on HN can explain it. I keep
reading that millenials don't like human interaction. Things like prefering to
wait in line at a kiosk to order food when there is an order taking human
available with no waiting. Preference for online ordering a pizza so there is
no need to speak to a human order taker on the phone. Stare at social media on
a mobile device rather than socialize with physical humans. It's no wonder
there's less sex going on.

I used to think it was Facebook and the like that turned an entire generation
into social retards. But the effect seems to predate social media.

~~~
majewsky
That's more of an introvert-vs-extrovert thing, rather than an age thing,
IMHO.

~~~
geomark
Ok, but how is it that such a large fraction of an entire generation has
become introverted? People whose business it is to pay attention to these kind
of things have a lot of data showing that's the case. Andy Puzder, CEO of
Hardee's and Carl's Jr says "Millennials like not seeing people"[1] That's
based on observing lots of them in their stores.

[1] [http://uk.businessinsider.com/millennials-hate-
interacting-w...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/millennials-hate-interacting-
with-people-2016-8)

~~~
cholantesh
There's no data in that article, but people have been deriding fast food and
retail workers long before the millennial generation came of age.

------
Iv
Born in 1981, a bit early to be called a millenial but not that far. I
remember an old hippie referring to us as "the AIDS generation". So afraid of
STDs that we refrain from having all the sex we can. It somehow applies.

~~~
AstralStorm
There seems to be no unifying subculture anymore. See, you can call a person a
hippie and be mostly right.

If anything, you could call millennial an Internet user, but that is not a
subculture. Other than this there seems to be no unifying force. Even in Great
Depression there was one pretty well defined by Jazz and first available
movies in cinemas.

------
whamlastxmas
Young adults today probably meet and interact with many fewer people in person
than most any generation in the past 50+ years. Romantic relationships,
especially casual ones, are probably largely the result of meeting lots of
people in person. They spend less time around people in general due to social
media and whatever else they have. There's also probably some element of
narcissism that exists today that didn't previously due to social media (and I
apply this to all age groups).

Seems like a pretty simple explanation to me.

------
niftich
This opinion piece started off promisingly, but by the end, I lost track of
what point the author was trying to make. Truly, did they merely offer retorts
to the people quoted in the referenced WaPo article?

I was expecting an analysis like the first couple paragraphs foreshadowed, not
just a 'yeah, well, these people are quirky, but they may have a point here or
there'. Does anyone feel the same?

~~~
helthanatos
I lost track when the ads popped up... Not sure if the opinion is right
though. To me, it seems that most people have sex by sometime in high school

