Why are people having less sex?

[Hartley99]

I read a shocking statistic in the paper today. In 2009, 30% of men aged 18-24, and 50% of women, were having "no sex". In 2018, the same survey found that 43% of men aged 18-24 were having no sex, and 74% of women! The number of teenage pregnancies has plummeted as well. Also, and I wonder if this is connected in some way, the number of young people who don't drink alcohol has massively increased. Young people also seem less interested in relationships, or having children. In fact, people in general seem less and less keen to date, form relationships or families, etc. I'm pretty sure the birth rate is falling as well.

I've always found these sorts of social trends/changes fascinating. I kind of regret not studying sociology, actually. It's so interesting. What drives these changes? I was a teenager in the '90s, and there is no doubt that young people today are far less interested in sex and relationships than we were. They seem far more cynical, wary and suspicious. Rather than the end goal of life, they seem to view marriage and kids as a trap – something they might have to endure one day, but which they'd rather delay or avoid altogether. Or is it just me?

What’s cheap or free? Internet/social media/porn
What’s expensive? Pubs/clubs/restaurants/cinema/driving/owning/renting

My kids were in the last couple of years of school when Covid hit. Prior to that they would go out with their mates, albeit not terribly often. Then they spent the best part of 2 years socialising online. Now that’s what they’re comfortable with. Add in girls these days are way more savvy, aware of and confident in their worth as a female, and have a constant stream of information detailing men doing shit things, it’s hardly surprising.

I would say it is a combination of:

• An increasing number of different forms of entertainment with lower barriers to entry and hyper stimuli
• Cost of living / rent property prices
• Childhood and adolescence stretching out further and further
• Work from home
• MeToo / battle of the sexes
• Lack of socialisation/ character development
• Increase in mental health issues and disorders
• Increased knowledge of sexual health

Porn is a factor but I think the bigger issue is we are far less sociable. This online world that dominates so many of our lives is largely BS, "social" media especially. People taking pictures of every aspect of their lives ("here's my dinner plate") and then hoping for likes (and getting upset if someone hasn't liked whatever it is they posted, and their mental health takes a nosedive because of it). We have lost the art of being able to communicate with actual people.

Anecdotal, but I go for a ride on my bike on a regular basis around my town and the surrounding countryside, and the one thing that is so different from when I was in my teens (90s) is how quiet the streets are. There used to be so much noise outside, kids playing (screams, laughter, shouting, ball being kicked etc.) neighbours chatting etc, now its eerily quiet. Everyone is now inside playing on their gadgets (what i'm doing right now).

We are becoming more and more isolated, physically, than ever. It's great to have so much information at your fingertips, plus access to pretty much anything that interests you, but the drawback with so much time spent looking at a screen is that we have less real interaction with each other.

Too many anti depressants

Why does love demand marriage?

battle of the sexes

That's one hell of a minimisation and misframing of women's legitimate objection to men committing rape.

Anti depressants

What are these survey results based on? It sounds like a very difficult topic to actually properly survey.

It doesn't. But people like to get married to the person they love for any number of reasons. Getting married doesn't mean you have to have kids

In my experience, it's very challenging. If I was to use a dating app now and swipe right on every person, I would get maybe half a dozen matches each month. The number of those that agree to a date and eventually have sex would be even smaller. Finding a partner takes a lot of hard work, self improvement, and studying. Nothing like ordering a pizza.

I look at the legal implications of marriage, the spouse becoming the person who makes your medical decisions for you if you are in a coma, inheriting all your stuff if you die intestate and being able to contest your will if you do write one, and being able to claim part of your assets when you divorce; I look at the rate of husbands abusing their wives; and I think "why would anyone put themselves at this considerable physical, medical, and financial risk unless they were planning to have kids?"

This probably also applies to the OP's question about sex too.

The closure of Craigslist Casual Encounters is what stopped sex for me. The various apps just don't work anything like as well.

A lot of young men are going backwards in regards to misogyny and young women really feel this. I have young women mid to late 20s in my family, all very attractive but have never been sexually active, they see through the bullshit and don’t want to be used up by some fuck boi Andrew Tate manosphere spewing wannabe. The internet and easy access to porn is really doing a lot of damage to young people.

Craigslist was poor. All of the adverts were just various financial scams. The website moderators took no action to delete adverts that were clearly scams.

People are tired. Half of the people are doing more than half of the thinking, planning and running of the household. Half of the people are too resentful to be horny when sex has begun to feel like housework too.

I never had any problems getting replies to my adverts. Unlike the apps, bots and scammers were easy to spot.

Men don't seem to grasp that the common factor in all the women who have turned them down is themselves.

I have a partner but we don't have sex often. He has a number of health conditions and I'm exhausted looking after my disabled dcs. I think there are many reasons why sex isn't always priority as you get older.

It's strange to think so many younger people don't want to have sex. It's a sign of the times.

Around here fewer teens are moving away for Uni due to the cost. We have 3 good Uni's within an easy train journey. More are living in halls for the first year then coming home for the remaining two.

The young women I know in this age bracket don't date because they say OLD is a cesspit. They also say that there is a noticeable rise in right wing ideology in men and in admirers of Andrew Tate.

Dating is way more risky for women than men and women need to be getting something out of it. If men are expecting choking and anal sex it's unsurprising to me that a lot of women are voting with their feet.

It's also acceptable for women not to marry and have kids in a way that was not the case in the 1980s and 1990s. At that time being a single mother was also highly stigmatised. So women have more choices in that respect now. And when they look at their parent's generation they probably see more unhappy relationships and divorce than happy relationships.

Having a family is a lot of work for most women compared to the option of staying single. And even in a couple the woman usually does more than her share of housework. Buying a house is out of reach of many young people and a family sized house even more so.

In my opinion men really need to up their game.

I love a juicy statistics, they can mean everything we want.

My lecture from it is:
Teen pregnancies have dropped, Hurray!

More contraceptives and information are available.
Young people, especially women doesn't feel for the first one, Hurray! More awareness of their own self and their potential.

Also agreed with PP that the access to porn of many kinds that there is available now doesn't make any favour as create a false expectation in young people.

This is a fairly consistent finding in studies of sexual behaviour. I would say yes there is a "sexually adventurous" subset of women. Mine and DH's ratios were something like that when we met.

But is this ACTUALLY happening?

I’ve seen these kinds of statistic before. Same about being single and childfree.

But I’ve never seen this happen in real life.
Going by my younger relatives, people now are just as obsessed with dates and hook-up’s, marriage and kids as they were decade ago when I was young.

Being single or not hooking up is seen less than, you’re boring and frigid prude, nothing have seem to change.
Everyone around me is or wants the conventional life, so I have to say I’m baffeled by the notion that large numbers don’t…

I think posters have stayed the reasons.
However, the number of childfree women has remained roughly the same for decades, about 19%. That is not rising.
I see lots of women in their 20s having children. Maybe the area I live in is different to posters on here, I don’t know.
I will say this though, and slate me all you like, it’s a certain type of man and woman in their 20s who are having children.
They often don’t work in professional jobs, aren’t highly educated, perhaps have children to different partners.
They are still having children below the average age.

Everything in today’s culture is sexualised and saturated in sex. There’s nothing left to the imagination, there’s no romance about it. When I look back on my late teens and twenties - the most powerful memories is mostly not the sex itself but the romantic feelings and anticipation. I can remember my stomach swooping at the most innocent handwritten note or text message. My heart hammering at holding hands. Feeling breathless with anticipation at the office when I walked through his department. And those things would be the highlight for weeks, it was a slower build back then.. you’d think for weeks about what a kiss would be like with them. I cannot believe online dating sparks the same chemistry.
All the fresh air, sports and exercise and good food of yesteryear was a stimulant! People were healthy in their hormones and body and mind. Lots of studies have been done to show today’s lifestyle can majorly lower sex hormones and put those natural desires out of whack.
All this agonising over what bizarre niche sexual category you are today, DH’s young niece changes her Instagram pronouns and info every month and it’s all utter nonsense, I feel so sorry for her because she’s a normal young girl but her heads full of junk. Apparently now she’s pan poly amorous or something (after being everything else in the last year or so) - it’s all complete rubbish! What a waste of her beautiful vibrant youth.
So much of life lived on life, but it’s no life at all.