[gibbonsrcool]

Is it possibly because they're not sleeping with each other? Seems to be all over the news lately, the decline of young people having sex. The older I get, the less I see sex as optional for human health and well-being. There's no time you crave it more than adolescence, so going without it then could be even more damaging. Sex is not just a fun experience, it's a basic psychological need. Both the left and right in the US are way too puritanical and I really hope there's a big shift in popular culture to stop censoring sex and maybe think about toning down the violence.

[golemotron]

Let's see.. it was simultaneous and synchronized across the Anglophone countries in the early 2010s.

It's sort of peculiar for Puritanism to appear suddenly and simultaneously in widely distant countries that share a common language but have different cultures, right?

No, I think the change in phones and what they enabled in social media is a better explanation.

[gibbonsrcool]

The decline in young people's sexual activity is a recent event: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-have-been-...

[golemotron]

That started in Japan around 2000, a good ten years before the mental health crisis that struck kids at about 13 years of age in English speaking countries simultaneously.

[theGnuMe]

Japan is in some sense at the leading edge of male isolation and loneliness and depression.

[fomine3]

And limited internet access on feature phone (i-mode, J-Sky, EZweb) was a thing from around 2000. Many students had it. So it strengthen original argument.