
Social conservatism on American campuses - un_montagnard
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/05/04/no-sex-please-were-millennials
======
awakeasleep
I wish they'd include the idea of "competition in the marketplace for orgasms"
alongside these social and economic ideas.

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).

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.

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)

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.

~~~
01100011
There has _always_ been porn. _IME_ , it served several roles, but generally
did not replace the desire to be in a relationship or at least physically
intimate with another person. Sure, porn is more available and more potent in
a sense now, and it may be a factor, but I think at most it is a minor one.
Something else is making kids introverted and isolated.

~~~
borumpilot
40 years ago, when I started my interest in porn, it was... different. Both in
availability and in "potentness".

Skip forward 40 years, I have a bunch of millennial kids. Their (for me
discoverable) sexual encounters are extremely limited in comparison to mine
and that of my wife, at that age.

Personally I do not think that the one (porn) has much to do with the other
(limited). What I suspect is far more the lack of privacy and anonymity.
Everyone in their age group seems afraid of the potential flack they will
receive “when people find out I did X with Y”. And with the current over
connectivity that seems a real possibility.

Whereas we, between 15 and 25, could disappear for a couple of hours / days,
and the lamest excuse would enable you to get away with anything.

I truly do not envy this generation. It seems growing up, as in establishing
your own personality and experiences, is so much harder.

------
mellow-lake-day
> The economy is strong.

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.

[https://www.npr.org/2018/11/30/672103209/why-arent-
millennia...](https://www.npr.org/2018/11/30/672103209/why-arent-millennials-
spending-more-they-re-poorer-than-their-parents-fed-says)

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/millennials-are-much-poorer-
tha...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/millennials-are-much-poorer-than-their-
parents-data-show/)

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/09/shutdown-highlights-
that-4-i...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/09/shutdown-highlights-
that-4-in-5-us-workers-live-paycheck-to-paycheck.html)

[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/05/global-
econ...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/05/global-economic-
crash-2020-understand-why)

~~~
winter_blue
Well, we had a huge recession 10 years ago, and we’ve only recently recovered
fully from it. We’re at full employment now. There are more open jobs today
than unemployed people in the US.

It’s true that the value of unskilled and low-skilled labor has dropped, but
the value of skilled labor has substantially increased. Case in point:
software developers are _on average_ making $150k in salary alone in the Bay
Area. Add bonuses, equity, and other cash and non-cash benefits: a good
programmer can easily make over $200k. (I’m a millennial, and I find my own
compensation incredible and unbelievable.)

Americans living paycheck to paycheck has more to do with spending habits than
income. People in the United States continue to have the world’s highest
purchasing power. On a large scale, living paycheck to paycheck has more to do
with culture and discipline than level of income. (Exceptions exist: living in
a high cost-of-living area with low/minimum-wage income, only having part-time
temporary like PhD graduates who have to be adjuncts and TAs forever, etc.)

~~~
stunt
> There are more open jobs today than unemployed people

It also depends on your income source. People with low job quality end up with
low living quality regardless how much they earn.

If it is coming from a busy job that for whatever reason feels pointless and
or stressful, not having enough breaks, and long commute, etc..

That adds to all news about corruption, wars, conflicts, surveillance.. and
people end up adopting pets more than willing to have children because they
are seeking to have a free private time.

------
01100011
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.

I'm curious if whatever is behind our lowering sperm counts is also playing a
role in this.

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.

Also, title is misspelled. Two n's in millennials.

~~~
cybersnowflake
Obviously there are many factors, those included but I wouldn't be as quick to
discount ideological factors as many people are doing. The Metoo
stuff...actually this has been bubbling long before as a general feature of
puritanical 3rd wave feminism really has put a damper on things, not just
through direct fear instilled into men but generally moving the overton window
of sex in society's subconscious.

------
iamnothere
First off, I'm not making any judgments here -- every generation has its
problems.

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.

* Flirt with someone who rejects you? You lose status.

* Seen by peers with someone of potentially lower status? You lose status.

* Hook up with someone when there are negative rumors about them? You lose status.

* Make out with someone who rejected a friend? You damage that relationship and either gain or lose status based on mysterious dynamics.

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.

I would argue that there is actually an ongoing "status bubble" and that
people are _overestimating_ 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"?

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.

~~~
borumpilot
Very interesting take on the situation. Thanks, I will keep that in mind and
field test your hypothesis.

------
SamuelAdams
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.

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.

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.

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.

[1]: [https://i1.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-
content/uploads/2...](https://i1.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/10/dataclysm3.jpg)

[2]:
[https://i.redd.it/09d1ndzeki221.jpg](https://i.redd.it/09d1ndzeki221.jpg)

~~~
WalterGR
_Which means that the bottom 80% of men are competing for the top 10% of women
when meeting through online dating apps._

How does this conclusion follow from the charts you’ve linked to?

------
test6554
Previously a person's mate selection was very geographically constrained.
Everyone wanted to date the most attractive person in (school, town,
neighborhood).

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.

~~~
feministincel
Hard disagree, most people aren’t looking outside of a pretty narrow radius on
the apps.

~~~
masonic
Parent said "mates" rather than hookups.

~~~
claudiawerner
I always cringe when I see people describe human relationships in biological
terms, it hints at a feeling of reductiveness, or the applicability of all
biological models to human behavior without taking into consideration massive
societal differences and the change in attitudes and the emergence of new
sexuality (see Japan's hikkikomori) even of the past few hundred years. It's
the same sort of "analysis" that uses "breeding" to refer to when people have
children. To top it off, the people using these terms to describe human
phenomena are likely not even qualified in biological sciences, never mind
anthropology, sociology or psychology.

------
thatfrenchguy
" 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"

Can also be read as "The portion of Americans aged 18 to 29 who have sex has
slightly decreased, from 89% to 77%".

~~~
kthejoker2
A 15% decline is slight?

------
Arbalest
There seems to be a lot of different explanations given below, but I can't
help but think of:

It's all of them, more or less.

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.

------
koala_man
>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

>almost a threefold rise in the share of men under the age of 30 who _claim_
to be having no sex

So are people actually having less sex, or are they just more willing to admit
it?

------
bsder
How about too many people think that they deserve somebody too much more
attractive than they are?

Things like Facebook/Instagram/Tinder give the _illusion_ that there are lots
of attractive people out there when, in reality, those attractive people are
unavailable to _YOU_ because _YOU_ aren't attractive enough. If you hold out
for someone too far above your level, you're going to be waiting a while.

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.

------
fzeroracer
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.

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.

~~~
povertyworld
In the past the ruling class could always count on the proletariat (literally
"offspring producing") to reproduce itself no matter how abysmal its
conditions. Yet today we find ourselves in a situation Malthus could not have
expected: the proletariat is on reproductive strike! The ruling class response
is to push an ideology of mass migration that no one dares question. Who will
stand up and say they don't welcome immigrants? Not I. This solution seems to
be working in the short term, but if birth rates decline in the developing
world, there won't be anyone to mass migrate. Then what? Share the wealth?

~~~
titanomachy
Plenty of people speak up against mass immigration, especially amongst the
proles. Not everyone is concerned with being seen as racist.

------
bayareanative
A WaPo, NYPost & Village Voice alum who was also crab fisherman mentioned...
over time, values morph and almost invert entirely:

\- Upper-case Liberal Democrat become fascist, close-minded and exclusionary

\- The left becomes a circular firing squad

\- Republicans become more lower-case liberal

\- 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.

\- Victim hierarchy inverts power dynamics, rather than delivering equity for
all, due to prevalence of mandatory equality of outcome.

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.

------
blululu
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.

------
plainOldText
Less sex, and more porn most likely.

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.

~~~
bsder
> real life experiences are much more emotionally enriching

I would challenge this and probably flag it as the core problem.

Most interactions with the opposite sex are emotionally draining and insipid
and our digital interactions are almost _always_ more rewarding.

The problem is that you have to wade through a ton of mud to get to the gold
nugget that is someone you genuinely like to interact with.

~~~
plainOldText
> Most interactions with the opposite sex are emotionally draining ...

Indeed, but this can be successfully counteracted to some degree by proper
socialization, and by participating in social activities alongside a group of
friends, which by virtue of creating social contexts, will lower the barriers
to social interactions.

People spend too much time indoors in the company of their screens, and
without adequate social training, anxiety will surely present itself when one
is placed in the company of real people, especially of the opposite sex.

> The problem is that you have to wade through a ton of mud to get to the gold
> nugget that is someone you genuinely like to interact with.

Anything meaningful in life requires some level of effort. There's no way
around it.

------
ginvok
Everything we do is wrong, so I really don't know what we are supposed to do.

------
faissaloo
I find it fascinating to see see the cognitive dissonance between the writer's
findings and conclusion.

------
ummonk
What is with the editorialized title?

------
diogenescynic
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.

------
golergka
> 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.

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.

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.

~~~
Pfhreak
This is a wild exaggeration. Men used to be able to basically hit on women in
all contexts with zero consequence (e.g. hitting on women at work was ok, let
alone butting into a group at a bar). More recently, people have been pushing
back on men who are inappropriate.

This leads to some men who don't understand the new boundaries having a very
large overreaction and essentially saying that it's impossible or scary to
'chat someone up'. See also the men who won't work/game in mixed gender groups
because it's "too difficult".

The new rules are essentially 'be respectful' and "there's a time a place" and
'politely accept no as an answer' and 'no one owes you shit'.

They aren't complicated rules.

~~~
bonestamp2
Even easier, just be nice, friendly and maybe even charming. You shouldn't
even start to flirt until all that is going well, and by then the flirting is
probably fine.

~~~
wnoise
Many people would consider being nice, friendly, and especially charming to be
flirting.

~~~
bonestamp2
I just mean in the same way that they are (or should be) nice, friendly and
charming with their friends and family.

If you meet new people and you find them attractive, treat them like they are
already a friend that you've known for years. Don't be weird, just tell them a
funny story, embarrass yourself, show them that you're fun and human. Those
are my rules, and I've dated way out of my league my entire life. I'm not
saying it's easy, but it is simple (not to be confused).

------
ArtDev
I wonder if dating apps contribute to a "paradox of choice".

The book by Aziz Anzari "Modern Dating" suggests this may be a factor.

~~~
yingw787
I really liked this book! I don't think I want to post spoilers (like really
buy and read the book), but I think he established an inverse relationship
between how free a society is towards sex and how much actual sex people have.

------
skookumchuck
40% of romances used to be office romances. These days, asking a woman out at
work will get you reprimanded by HR.

------
omosubi
Is there a non-paywall version anywhere?

~~~
ed
[https://outline.com/xxTDbh](https://outline.com/xxTDbh)

------
jparse
Non Paywall Version: [https://outline.com/xxTDbh](https://outline.com/xxTDbh)

------
newnewpdro
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.

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.

Unless, of course, you want to make children.

