People Have Been Having Less Sex—whether They’re Teenagers or 40-Somethings

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118425373#Comment_118425373

It's absurd to say that society is eating itself. The rest of this is just hysteria to be honest and just supports my argument that it's this generation's subject of ranting.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118424740#Comment_118424740

You're the OP and it's a simple question. If you can't elaborate, fair enough but since you began this thread, it'd be nice if you at least gave it a go.

starkid

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118425479#Comment_118425479

im talking about it being a long term problem of 30-40 years. you yourself cited tv and video games. how can you seperate the last two from today? its the same trend, we haven´t even got to proper vr gaming which is fairly close.

so, yeah whatever you say. absurd indeed.

I suppose the hysteria of climate change and other issues is just ¨ranting¨.

its nonsense to suggest its the same as rock music and novels.

for the record i hope none of it comes to pass, but a cursory glance at things shows we are in trouble. ffs the op´s study shows exactly this.

if you think the internet, phones and social media hasn´t driven change and is just another line of cultural trends you´re asleep.

and i´m not anti any of these things. some day we could be looking back at the time a bezos or a musk stopped dicking around and cured cancer or something. its going to drive our society mostly ffor the better, i´d hope. i suppose the other option is the worst case scenario.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118425497#Comment_118425497

Climate change has been studied extensively. To introduce it here is a bit silly.

starkid

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118425519#Comment_118425519

how so its part of the same societal issue. its a large driver of anxiety in younger people etc.

anyway i edited to say its more the worst case scenario, i´m not saying its a given. society eating itself in terms of where we are heading without some serious conversations. as in regulating social media, which i´d imagine is fairly close in the next while. its too extensive to go in depth here. i just feel people casually dismissing it like yourself is absurd. i mean the op´s study clearly shows something is happening.

i´m not one of those people who say omg all the people on the phone etc. most of the people are reading something. technology is vital to where we are heading. its just about finding balance imo.

I´m a believer in technology driving a better future.

and eating was just a throwaway remark. it could be society is twisting itself in knots, dumbing itself, rehashing itself. And i think we need a refresh (not a reset)

Everything on the thread has gone very cerebral and esoteric 😂

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118425536#Comment_118425536

It's nothing to do with the topic of the thread, obviously. I doubt people are making decisions about having sex based on the climate crisis. Having children, almost certainly but not having sex.

Society is not going to eat itself. This is just absurd hysterics. It's easy to casually dismiss it when you haven't bothered to make a proper argument.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118424700#Comment_118424700

It's a bit simplistic to quote increases in suicide rates, when the topic was largely covered up and swept under the carpet in the good old days.

starkid

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118425560#Comment_118425560

yeah but you dismissed the overall trends as just another long line of ¨ills of society¨ etc. so you kind of went off topic yourself. yeah its just like Elvis coming along in 1950. i would go further and say its all part of the same line. late 1800s to today. maybe thats the max we can do in that timeline.

society is clearly focusing on hyper captitalism and consumption at the expense of our culture and planet. we have reached peak globalisation and interconnection. okay instead of eating itself, lets saying slowly floating into a **** sandwich. but its not too late to reright our direction. theres huge positives as well.

and sure isn´t it a great argument you made yourself. another chimera indeed. ffs

you took one word from my overall point. well done

anyway i can see the evidence in my own life, the life of my friends, family and children. i have seen the effect of social media on my 13 year old daughter directly and through my job. anecdotal etc, but its all backed up by similar studies. Heck covid itself has given us a huge glimpse into what scifi writers and futurists wrote long ago.

it will all be grand i suppose.

starkid

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118425552#Comment_118425552

and people using fancy words as well!

i think studies like this do need more than a glance to be fair.

Personally i was only responding to a poster dismissing tech as a driver of this as just another cultural touchstone, like rock music etc. it clearly isn´t. and anybody who saids that hasn´t seen the effects first hand etc nor has been keeping up with the news.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118425572#Comment_118425572

I dismissed it because it's all hysterics that are barely related to the topic of the thread. Your anecdotes aren't evidence, either. If the OP had bothered to make a proper argument, it'd be easier to engage. Instead, it's all very much Helen Lovejoy "Won't somebody please think of the children".

When it comes to tech there's a serious issue. I haven't got peer-reviewed stuff handy so if you want some see if you can find it or accept this is meant to be a not-that-****-serious message board and just ignore my post.

When I think back 20 years ago I'm sure there were internet addicts and the like. But for the vast majority of people the internet and computers were just a fun hobby. Now though, phones and always-on connections and access have changed that. Every person I've talked about this with in real life say they know they use their phone too much. Including myself. I want to use it less but when there's a moment of boredom it's right bloody there. Was just talking with a mate the other night and he said "I know I use it too much but I don't know how to go about changing it".

I'd almost compare it to obesity. If someone has a drink or drug problem it's simple, stop using. And Christ, before someone flips their lid, "simple" doesn't mean "easy". Whereas with weight problems you can't just cut food out. If you can tinker with your thought patterns then you "just" need to make 3-5 good decisions a day, though a lot of people would love to only think about food around mealtimes. With phones, most of us need them to some extent. The friend I was talking to the other day uses it to promote his business and for messaging customers. So it's not really a "just get rid of it" situation. And now the bloody banks basically require you to have a smartphone to do online banking so there's a whole 'nother big reason you have to have one around. Now people are loading payments cards, covid certs etc. onto their phones, making them ever more intrinsically important to function day-to-day.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118425638#Comment_118425638

Personal screen time (using personal/small devices for almost all entertainment, transaction & info) has certainly got people out of the habit of interacting person-to-person close-up, and individually absorbed in whatever content is on the screen in front of them. Even in the “old days” of watching tv with family there was inter-personal presence in the form of the odd comment about what was happening on the particular show being viewed. People are tending to interact with devices very much on a solo basis these times, and look at me here doing it just now. My commentary here, on Twitter, Facebook etc is often to people I have little clue about. When I chat on WhatsApp it is often with people I might not see in person for ages, and in some cases to people I have never met in person.

Being a screen society our sexual experiences would also reflect this. And certainly the pandemic has greatly amplified this. Yes, I would agree that technology has had a huge input to our sexual behaviour as a society.

I find the subject of human behaviour absolutely fascinating, Boards is a great place for discussing it.

starkid

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118425666#Comment_118425666

how is cultural trends and the argument of tech unrelated to a decline in sex? you are the one who linked current tech as just another ¨rock music, novel, tv¨ issue in the first place ffs. again theres numerous studies showing the issues of internet, porn, social media and gaming addiction ffs. if we follow the logic we can see its all probably related. my own daughter had issues with social media and attempted suicide at 13. i know of several other children in her cohort with mental health issues, directly stemming from social media and phone use. many of them with body issues, sexual identity problems etc. i was ignorant myself of the dangers. but erm yeah anecdotal right. if you think a decline in sex is normal and something to be dismissed then its worrying. if you think its somehow unrelated to modern technology use and the current cultural trends and just another rock music issue, well then you are an ignorant idiot.

with such a flippant quote i think i´m done. the balls you have to dismiss others on here. you look for evidence but clearly ignore numerous studies and experts on the issue including the op´s post.

Christ.

and iḿ in work i don´t have time to go into an indepth analysis of a very clear issue. Tatiana Brave Type has put it very well.

our society is facing a huge mental health crisis, and it doesn´t take a huge leap of imagination to see what is causing it. i dunno maybe you aren´t intelligent enough to analyse the situation. if you need evidence, google is your friend as well.

here´s one fact for you - https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/17/health/suicide-rates-young-girls-study/index.html

in one way you got it skewed you talked of novels. i presume you meant mass media. so yes mass media has clearly played an evolutionary step in what is happening. rolling 24 hour news, magizines for women have all played a part. again forget about the word eating itself. society is slowly capsizing without massive intervention. if you think the freemarket, ignoring it or tech gurus are going to be the saviours well then you need to best wake up. again think outside of yourself and deeper into the future.

starkid

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118425848#Comment_118425848

ah yeah great points. i do too. sorry that lad triggered me with his flippant remark. i have this argument with a guy in work. he´s always saying..yeah but its just the same as older people hating rock music and short skirts etc.

On the surface it seems correct, but any deep analysis of it shows it to be complete bullshit.

i just cannot get how anybody thinks a decline in sex is somehow unrelated to current trends and current tech trends. mind boggling.

i think we have to take it as one long stretch of enlightened western style society. the invention of electricity, communications to today. that World is relatively young. and unfortunately now we are tying ourselves up in knots and we are losing the ability to critically think about our society. great minds or people who think outside the box are dismissed and sidelined, and politicised. alot of driven by the internet. when the president of the USA can directly tweet its no longer an echo chamber. see Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Galloway, Corbyn or whomever. every point can be argued or twisted or challenged easily. great in some ways, terrible in others.

the advancement of the printing press, cable, telegram, radio, tv, news, music, internet is all connected and part of the same line of cultural evolution. so yeah people were giving out about them in some way similar to current social media, however we are near the pinnacle of human society. if we take our society as been based on raw materials, where we need children to go down mines to collect rare minerals for phones in 2021, well then yeah i think its all part of the same line as we reach the decline of that old world. and its quite clearly crumbling, not in real time but bit by bit. to dismiss it as hysteria is to dismiss something similar like climate change. it can be seen in all the trends. youth culture, adult culture, banking, politics, music, film, business and on and on. the challenge is to right it. and we can. but we won´t do it when some people seem to think its hysteria or not happening.

Sunny Disposition

Shouldn’t the internet be resulting in more sex rather than less, with online dating? And more masturbation, with freely available porn?

Until maybe 25 years ago there was a lot of shame associated with casual sex, even with unmarried sex. it’s disappointing that the amount of sex would go down even as the taboo disappeared.

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118426450#Comment_118426450

More partners maybe but not necessarily more sex. Porn and fapping into an old sock while watching it becomes a lazy replacement for it

Choice paralysis, particularly for women has to be an issue with online dating. And not just the online dating itself, the "having it all" thing is still working its way through society. My sister did one year in an all-boys school just over a decade ago and couldn't believe the attitudes of the guys. She assumed they were either horndogs or just driven to "succeed" whereas the majority were much keener on school - college - decent job - have and raise a family. The girls she tended to be around had much more and varied plans and ideals. Given how things are turning out, perhaps too many. It's not just technology either, the focus on career progression and a vague plan to travel at some point means many women are in their late 20s before they can consider starting a family. By which point the options are fewer and people are more set in their ways. Sure they may settle but just by plain old probability if they're settling down because they need to then the relationship may not be on the best foundations. And plenty are happy enough not to as well. Speaking for myself I'm 33 and likely a bit too set in my ways.

AckwelFoley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118426818#Comment_118426818

I got married at *checks notes* 33, my wife was 29.

I had dated quite a variety for about a year and a half before I met her (when I was 30)

I found women in their 30s, mid to late that were persistently single were very set in their routine- that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's a personal choice, but found anecdotally that they tended to be less open for change and hence why these relationships were over shortly after they got started.

It used to he a commentary that it's harder for women to have a family and a career because of the obvious, but I'm not sure that's necessarily as true as it once was. I think men are more involved in the most part with the rearing of a family than they used to be. I know certainly in my case, career expansion has been depressed by snot, vomit, piss and germs

And that's just the names of the first 4 children

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118427778#Comment_118427778

Ah yeah it's not all completely black and white but among extended family I've noticed (aside from the teenage pregnancies that were always going to happen) that the ones who meet and marry in their early 20s seems to stay together and from the outside at least seem happy and have set themselves up well for the future. Building something together with someone you would do anything for and vice versa sounds lovely to me, I just think on balance it's easier/more likely where people are coming in with less baggage and hang-ups and with less to lose as it were.

America is a whole other story though, they get married as a feckin hobby from when they finish school. :P

Beechwoodspark

Married here but for what it’s worth - Lad I work with - 23 or so - said he’d rather watch the beauties of American p0rn online than spend up to 60 on a date night with a “local heifer” (his phrase).

EmmetSpiceland

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118429099#Comment_118429099

Why go out for steak when you can have a pot noodle and a wänk at home?

bnt

I see the old trope got trotted out: "we need more kids now so that they'll grow up and pay for our old age". 🤨

Here's an idea: how about you pay for your own old age pension, using the money you saved through not having to pay to raise one or more ungrateful offspring? This idea of getting other people to pay for your future has a definite "pyramid scheme" air surrounding it.

Greyfox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118429147#Comment_118429147

It's more like go out and you have a 15% chance of getting steak and 85% chance of getting nothing or just stay home and your guaranteed to at least get a standard burger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118416272#Comment_118416272

Post #11...you're slowing down Emmet :P

Loafing Oaf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118429099#Comment_118429099

But a very resonant one, I think we'll agree...

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118429040#Comment_118429040

>America is a whole other story though, they get married as a feckin hobby from when they finish school. :P

They call it the 'starter marriage' over there, similar to the starter home concept here. Dip your feet into the market and see how things work, before moving onto something bigger and better.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118431811#Comment_118431811

When I was in my early 30's a friend of mine was living in the States and he came back for a visit with an American girlfriend in tow. She was around 25 IIRC and had been married already. We all went out for a few jars one night and she was genuinely surprised, with a hint of shock that none of the men and women around the table, average age 30, were married or had been married.

Irish people marrying later than the average was always in play though. Somewhere about the place I've a Guinness book of records from the early 80's I think and one of the Irish based stats is oldest age for marriage in Europe. The old "Irish engagement" that goes on for years was certainly a cultural meme. I suppose before divorce came in taking one's time was prudent, but in other Catholic countries the same trend couldn't be seen.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118429609#Comment_118429609

I think this is it. Years back, if you stayed in you were held hostage to what was on the telly. Not so nowadays. One of the few things I regret about when I was younger was wasting so much time in pubs and clubs trying to pull.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/prostate-cancer/expert-answers/prostate-cancer/faq-20057800

Theres minor evidence that frequent ejaculation may have some protective effect against developing prostate cancer. Worth taking action nonetheless, can only be good for the body as a whole.

Loafing Oaf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118432627#Comment_118432627

But does it justify jeopardising your immortal soul?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118433395#Comment_118433395

No places beyond the pearly gates for those who have “discharged “ too much in their lives, so to speak 🤣

EmmetSpiceland

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118434318#Comment_118434318

To quote the great Billy Joel, “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners are much more fun”.

osarusan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118433395#Comment_118433395

Definitely, even if the medical benefits turn out to be bogus.

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118429099#Comment_118429099

I wonder what the case is in Germany when you could spend 60 euros for 30 mins at the local brothel or sex club.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118434318#Comment_118434318

What made the pearly gates so pearly?

Beechwoodspark

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118434397#Comment_118434397

That option isn’t available in ireland though. We have Victorian era draconian laws regarding prostitution.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118434397#Comment_118434397

I've seen comments on Reddit likening it to scratching an itch. If you're out with friends, you're out with friends. If you want casual sex, it's quicker and easier to just pay for it. Not remotely my thing but to each their own.

Potential-Monke

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118432627#Comment_118432627

Yurt! 1:1 with days of the year. I spoil myself.

Loafing Oaf

Maybe their natural urges have been smothered by sexual disgust

https://imgur.com/jQYTeYv

https://i.imgur.com/XcfZUYE.gif