[revx]

The article mostly blames pornography and digital addiction, but I think those are symptoms of a larger problem, which is lack of belonging and community. If life sucks, you have few friends you can afford the time or money to see, and you work to make other people rich until you are exhausted, when do you have time and energy to maintain a relationship? If you feel like the world is on fire, it's hard to get in the mood.

It would help if we built third spaces that weren't centered around alcohol, which is also declining in popularity, especially with young adults.

Americans: why isn't anyone having sex anymore??

Also Americans: Abstinence only! You'll get pregnant! No abortions! STDs will kill you! Men deserve sex! We're not going to teach you how your body works!

Of course we end up with declining sex, in a country so obsessed with individualism and sex-adverse.

I do see hope though. The kids in my community are being taught age-appropriate, consent-based sex ed, and the availability of free, high-quality sex ed is improving.

I would be really interested to see if sex frequency is declining for everyone, or just for people who aren't putting in any emotional labor to learning and growing as a person when it comes to sexuality.

Just some off-the-cuff thoughts :)

[chongli]

The decline of community is a very big deal. I think a lot of it has to do with the way we build our living spaces. Modern North American cities are rife with car-centric suburbs, huge driveways, front doors set back a mile from the sidewalk, long commutes to anywhere (not just work, even to get groceries). We're living in these metal-and-glass boxes and we only see other people as obstacles in the way of what we want, rather than fellow human beings.

It seems to me that we've built this horrible, alienating environment not by deliberate choice but through a larger collective and political process none of us could individually control. We've created rules (building codes and zoning laws) that entrench this dystopia in countless small ways which will take a concerted effort to undo.

[onetimeusename]

There's something about this I think is illuminating. I don't think the social issues fall into partisan politics. It's like we've abstracted away people into something like a corporate entity. Even in large residence buildings in cities, people don't know each other right next to them. That's in contrast with small villages where everyone knows each other for generations. Another example is roads and how road rage forms as a result of dehumanizing people into entities.

So it's like the US is primarily for corporate entities to interact in predefined contractual settings that have abstracted away anything human about them. Even families are kind of like corporate entities interacting with each other. I am not sure how it got to this point but maybe something like pursuit of income at the expense of social ties and over-litigation caused it. I'm not sure.

[realvz]

I have lived in villages and cities in different continents. This abstraction you speak of isn’t limited to the US. Asian and European cities are the same. People don’t tend to socialize a lot with their neighbors in the cities as much as they did and still do in the villages.

Is this capitalism? Is it technology (I’m not talking about computers) induced narcissism? Is it because we reduce ourselves and others to metrics and then use yardsticks to incessantly measure ourselves on a broken scale?

[cush]

All good points. Work from home isn’t helping us any either. People typically meet their partners at work.

[ctoth]

What 1970s office have you been working at where this is true?

[add-sub-mul-div]

It couldn't be more obvious and intuitive that the people you're around for half your waking time would be one of the bigger sources of potential partners, and also just friends/acquaintances where a partner comes from the social networks thusly formed.

[cush]

The one that exists in reality

[platevoltage]

Most of my working life I've worked with grizzled old dudes. I think thats the case for a lot of other men too.

[fennecbutt]

Not everyone is straight either

[platevoltage]

You’re kidding, really?

[giardini]

"Grizzled old dudes" often make good husbands and they have sufficient income and lifestyle to support a family.

[iamacyborg]

> People typically meet their partners at work.

That seems unlikely. Genuinely curious if there’s something I’m missing here.

[notahacker]

This paper suggests meeting people directly or indirectly via work was second to meeting through friends around the turn of the century, though there was a wide spread of how people met so it only amounted to a fifth of couples. Then online took over....

https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Rosenfeld_et_al_Disinterm...

[exe34]

it's for attractive people. for the rest of us it's a quick trip to HR.

[BobaFloutist]

You meet people at work, you don't proposition them at work.

[fruitworks]

I don't think your distinction matters at all.

If you're attractive and your advances are well recieved, you will not get reported to HR. Vice versa.

[exe34]

You follow them to the gym, do you?

[Daviey]

Ah, I found the cheat code... My now-wife was in HR.

[TrnsltLife]

Dating at work has almost become an incest level taboo.

[ccorcos]

I think cars and urban design are too often used as a scapegoat.

Whether living in an apartment building in a city or a house in the suburbs, I’m frequently surprised how many people never introduce themselves to their neighbors. And that has nothing to do with cars.

People want some external system to construct a social environment for them and often blame everything but themselves when they could easily arrange a neighborhood get together by passing out some flyers…

[chongli]

People want some external system to construct a social environment for them and often blame everything but themselves

I think this dependence on external systems, on governments, is another symptom of the problem. When people belong to a community they don't have that expectation, they are participants. Look to the Amish, for example, and their famous barn-raisings. They don't depend on government relief or insurance policies. Everyone contributes to building a new barn when someone in the community needs one.

[binary132]

Mouse utopia comes to mind

[ctoth]

I've been reading this same exact comment since 2012, and it has not described any city I've lived in since the bad old Tallahassee days.

Come to Denver. We have suburbs that are walkable. Or rather don't, we don't need more people ;-)

[ancillary]

> Americans: why isn't anyone having sex anymore?? Also Americans: Abstinence only! You'll get pregnant! No abortions! STDs will kill you! Men deserve sex! We're not going to teach you how your body works!

None of that is new in America. If anything, I'd expect that these forces were stronger 20-30 years ago, when sexual activity rates were higher.

[ryoshu]

Social media and phones with cameras has made a lot of people risk adverse. When a video can hit Twitter or TikTok or Reddit about something that can ruin your life why risk it?

[onetimeusename]

I'm not sure that's it. It's a contradiction that we have social media where people share their lives and that people are risk averse to having videos made of themselves.

[seattle_spring]

It's not a contradiction: people don't share their real lives, they share a curated and often dishonest version of their lives. Obviously people don't want negative videos shared publicly.

[Ekaros]

And seeing some content commented online. Even that curated part might not sell the personality. I might even say that decent chunk of people who put their lives online are less than stable or good partner material.

[hiatus]

There are people running around poisoning produce and posting it online—I don't think camera shyness is an element of it.

[fruitworks]

Those people are psychopaths and the exception to the rule

[exe34]

just don't go to Coldplay concerts!

[more_corn]

If both you and your date are marred to other people.

[f-securus]

Roe V Wade reversal and the extent they rolled back women’s rights has certainly changed the atmosphere.

[xboxnolifes]

Roe v Wade reversal happened well past the observed decline in sex occurrence.

[hiatus]

The reversal of Roe v Wade has changed people's sex drives?

[platevoltage]

I would imagine it has for a certain portion of the population with a certain organ that is the subject of legislation.

[Yossarrian22]

Yes? There’s now additional risk of dying

[add-sub-mul-div]

True. The decline has been in effect for a while, but as for recent chages losing reproductive freedom can't be helping, nor AI and legal weed as two new ways for people to opiate themselves.

[margalabargala]

I don't think any meaningful segment of the population is using AI to "opiate" themselves. AI is a useful tool but I haven't heard of it having parasocial effects on any meaningful scale.

Happy to be shown otherwise if there's data?

[fragmede]

"Meaningful" is quite the qualifier. It's possible http://reddit.com/r/MyBoyfriendIsAI is entirely one person's work of fiction but also maybe not. From there you have to guess at how many people are doing that and just not telling anybody or posting about it online. So there's no data that proves it one way or the other, and all we've got to go on is anecdotes.

[lazide]

Eh, having lived in many other countries - lack of reproductive freedom definitely doesn’t cut back on sex. Same with public shaming, or other coercive control.

It’s not like there are 1.5 billion Indians because no one has sex there.

[notahacker]

I don't think the overturning of Roe vs Wade was the key driver in trends which started long before that decision, but there's a big difference between a society where girls marry who they're expected to marry and have sex with him when he expects it and a society where girls get to choose whether to hookup or not and if and when to marry but don't get to choose how they deal with the results...

[lazide]

I take it you’ve never lived in India?

Both are true in large part there, at least in the cities.

Except Indian politics are at least 10x as crazy as current US politics on the ground, and probably 10x as potentially (violently) serious if someone ‘steps out of line’, so people are better at hiding what is going on.

[fennecbutt]

Well they do also have 6-10 kids per family there so...

[msgodel]

That's very recent while this started quite a while ago.

[saulpw]

It takes about that long for the message to embed itself into the generational psyche.

[AnimalMuppet]

Hmm. Off topic, but I wonder if the reason for your second paragraph isn't your first paragraph. Sex and alcohol both are often escapes, and if you don't have time and energy for one, why would you have time and energy (and money) for the other?

Back on topic: You mention "people who aren't putting in any emotional labor to learning and growing as a person". But, from your first paragraph, who's got time and energy for that?

My own guess at an additional factor: Women's equality has made women who didn't need to depend on a man. As a result, they got a lot choosier about what downsides, flaws, and baggage they were willing to put up with.

[margalabargala]

> Women's equality has made women who didn't need to depend on a man. As a result, they got a lot choosier about what downsides, flaws, and baggage they were willing to put up with.

This would track with how a lot of dating apps, etc are described as "the top 70% of women competing for the top 30% of men"

[mjevans]

I can't even manage to get people I chat with online to get together to play any videogames I like the idea of on a recurring basis.

Time and energy don't exist for _that_ level of casual activity, let alone overpriced and time-expensive in person activities.

[platevoltage]

And I can speak with confidence that we men as whole, are not doing too hot.

[watwut]

Sex education lowers amount of sex among teenagers. Lack of it raises amount of sex among teenagers. Basically, when they know how body works, they have less sex, mostly dropping out of unsafe sex entirely. (Basically having less but safer sex).

Abstinence only education creates teenage pregnancies, basically.

[d4mi3n]

You make some good points about attitude around sex in parts of the US today, and the erosion of community is a topic I was was more often discussed.

Sex ed is also something I was more universally supported. Regardless of your views on when someone should have sex, I doubt it serves anyone’s goals to have young adults getting hurt, sick, or traumatized by a natural part of growing up.

[moron4hire]

This attitude is also being forced on people through media. Modern media seems almost allergic to the concept of even acknowledging that sex is a thing people do. Then, you look at the ways people self-censor on YouTube to avoid demonetization, where they won't even say the word sex. I see young people today who are shocked by movies and HBO TV shows from the 90s, 00s, and early 10s.

[watwut]

I watch mostly comedies a d crime stories on Netflix and there is no shortage of sex scenes. I am not deliberately searching them out, they just are there basically randomly.

I genuinely do not know what you are talking about heremaybe except "this person is consuming wastly different media".

[swagasaurus-rex]

Right, I’m glad there’s some platforms that still ensure standards for content.

Unlike facebook which recommends pornographic content and AI generated attention bait.

[revx]

I recently read (and enjoyed) Casey Tanner's _Feel it All_, which takes the stance that lack of sex ed is little-t traumatic, and backs up that argument convincingly.

It's a surprisingly positive read, given that thesis. The idea that we should be tought (in an age approptiate way) how our bodies work and how to respect others shouldn't be controversial, and yet, here we are.

[AstralStorm]

That would be true if the change was not worldwide, but most countries did not introduce serious sex ed.

Poland in particular is the outlier here, both in fall of birth rates and lack of sex ed...

Yet it got here even angrier at about the same time.

[mrits]

Even 30 years ago in East Texas we had sex ed in junior high. Abortions were legal and common. Boys had it shoved down their throats not to harass girls. I learned the biology of sex in 4th or 5th grade. While there was a common public message of abstinence the reality is most of the parents had their girls on birth control. At least all my friends were anyways.

[ecb_penguin]

Everything you said was more popular when rates of sex were higher, so clearly your thoughts aren't correct. On top of that, red states that push abstinence only have always had higher rates of teen pregnancy, again suggesting your ideas are not correct. Abstinence only education never stopped anyone.

> The kids in my community are being taught age-appropriate, consent-based sex ed, and the availability of free, high-quality sex ed is improving.

This has been the case in blue states for decades. I had proper sex-ed in the 90s.

[fruitworks]

Is sex ed positively correlated with greater fertility and frequency of sex? I expect the opposite is true.

[margalabargala]

I would expect the effect of sex ed (real sex ed, not "abstinence and jesus") would be to decouple fertility and sex frequency.

In a place where abortion was legal, I expect having sex ed would not significantly affect fertility rate but would decrease abortion rate.

[0xffany]

I expect fertility would drop, but frequency of sex would rise.

Knowing about your body and having access to contraceptives should in my opinion promote the frequency of sex.

[tialaramex]

I would expect it to reduce fertility because we know when you explain to girls how human reproduction actually works fewer of them are onboard because that sure looks like a traumatic experience. Oh so eventually after the other horrible side effects the parasite gets so large I have to push it out of my body through an orifice which is clearly not adequately sized for this purpose? Strong no.

But the other part sounds fun, so, why wouldn't learning about that encourage you? If you've done a decent sex ed course then a whole lot of fun possibilities are showcased, even if you think some of them are gross the others seem intriguing enough that I'd expect more rather than less will be interested in trying.

[fruitworks]

I think you are trying to come up with an individualistic argument for why sex ed should exist.

I'm just saying that observationally, traditional societies and sub-societies with worse sex ed that are less "sexually enlightened" tend to have more sex and fertility. Maybe it has something to do with breaking taboo?

[fragmede]

Viewed through a certain lense, you could view abstinence-only sex education and denial of access to abortions is a psyop to get (young) women to become pregnant and attached and dependant on a man.

[sizzle]

What about hookup culture and apps like Tinder, how do you factor that into your analysis? Also dating apps are connecting people which lead to intimacy. I wonder what the demographics reveal and if it’s only a subset of the population using these.

[Gibbon1]

My opinion of those is what I think of as the seal out of water effect. You wouldn't think a seal as a powerful and graceful animal if you only saw them out of the water. Most people on dating apps are like seals out of water.

[rkomorn]

What's the app for dating seals in water?

[msgodel]

Slowly building up context with people like coworkers and classmates over years.

[rkomorn]

No I meant actual seals.

[mrastro]

The inequality on dating apps is very high. Their Gini coefficients vary from 0.4 to 0.6 on most popular dating apps. Even if 100% of people were using dating apps, only the top percentiles of men would be satisfied because they can get way more short-term partners than they could without the apps.

To the extent hookups lead to relationships, it's coming from people that are willing to settle

[fy20]

Sex doesn't equal intimacy, at least in the way people really want. Modern dating apps turn sex into a transaction, a one night stand on tap.

[platevoltage]

I've had several meaningful relationships that were the results of dating apps, including my current 8-year one. And that one was from one of the "modern" apps you speak of.

[fennecbutt]

But are they being given fair sex Ed that includes same sex stuff too? Because that still seems incredibly lacking even amongst the "less prude" communities for it.

[SequoiaHope]

Quite interesting because in my trans and poly community I have found belonging, friendship, cuddles, alcohol free spaces, and lots of very exciting and interesting consensual safer sex. I’m having (by far) the best sex of my life after being active for 20+ years. It turns out that dancing in the forest on LSD is way more fun and exciting than chugging another beer on my couch (which is exactly how I spent my 20’s).

I think one reason the trans community is so threatening to a certain ideology is that we found happiness by intentionally and deliberately discarding core components of that ideology and having done so we found something better.

I truly never imagined I could have what I have today. In finding my way through poly, transition, and finding community, I changed my life. I don’t think for everyone gender transition is the answer, but going through a serious process of contemplative evaluation and change, however difficult it may be, did so much for me.

[imtringued]

When you have an inexplicable and paranoid disdain for a group and blame said group for the ills of everything wrong in the world, it's because the mere existence of said group disproves your worldview.

It's like a scientific discovery, a mathematical proof or evidence of a crime. The go to strategy is to get rid of that evidence, but how do you get rid of evidence if the evidence is a person?

[SequoiaHope]

Well they will try to ban HRT, try to ban trans access to every space they can, and if things get really bad they will turn their ICE-based kidnapping machine on trans people.

There are some very vocal right wing politicians in the US who say openly that trans people should be eliminated from society. Much like calls 20-30-40 years ago to eliminate gays from society, such an effort is impossible, but they could do great harm if they try.

[unglaublich]

Alcohol, while for some part of the population disastrous, does have a strong socializing effect on people. Recent kurzgesagt: https://youtu.be/aOwmt39L2IQ?t=567

cut - 10 minutes about alcohol being the most deadly drug on earth - "People who drink moderately have more friendships, closer friendships and higher levels of trust in others".

Now _moderately_ is the key word here.

[AstralStorm]

The trade is living on average a fifth shorter.

We need an approved better alternative. Seriously chemistry exists, we actually have pharmaceuticals that literally are the alcohol with vastly reduced side effects. Still addictive, of course.

[imtringued]

>Men deserve sex!

I think you got this one backwards.

The messaging I've seen is the opposite "Men don't deserve sex!".

The dead bedroom is particularly popular when the boyfriend in question is, in the words of the girlfriend in question, "gentle and treating his girlfriend better than any of her previous boyfriends".

Okay, but don't get surprised if men listen to you and avoid having sex.

[StopDisinfo910]

How can this non sense still be this prevalent nowadays?

Dead bedroom happens because people don’t solve their marital problems, generally have poor sex but are too afraid to talk about it, or to summarise communicate extremely poorly. It’s entirely unrelated to men being "too nice" whatever that’s supposed to mean.

If you are unhappy in your relationship, have some courage, talk about it, fix it or end it if it will never satisfy you. Stop playing the victim.

And to be fair, I think communication issue might be the crux of the modern lack of socialisation.

[AI_beffr]

tell me you know nothing about america without telling me you know nothing about america... jeez

[lo_zamoyski]

> Also Americans: Abstinence only! You'll get pregnant! No abortions! STDs will kill you! Men deserve sex! We're not going to teach you how your body works!

I don't know what time machine you arrive on, but no one has been seriously promoting abstinence for decades, except in certain religious circles, and that's where people are having the most sex and the best sex. That's not a coincidence. They more like to be engaging in it the only healthy way it can be: an expression of mutual self-giving and love, and an act of bonding that reinforces the relationship that's already there. Intrinsically entailed is its openness to new life, as that is its ultimate consummation and raison d'etre. Block that and you corrupt the act. Reap the consequences.

> Of course we end up with declining sex, in a country so obsessed with individualism and sex-adverse.

Sex averse? You must be joking. We're sex-obsessed! Creepiness has been normalized. You can't watch a movie for 5 minutes without having your face rubbed in a sex scene, or a newspaper with the latest sexual fetish looking to receive society's blessing instead of its condemnation and scorn. Advertising is heavily sexualized, contributing to the commercializing of sex. Dating culture, rather that being about courtship and getting to know someone to find a spouse, is and has been for some time some kind of dystopian and aimless sex ritual. What a mind job!

And porn use? Yeah, it is a problem and a major contributor to various disorders and insecurities. The vast majority of males (especially Gen Z) are regular consumers of pornography, which has never been so ubiquitous and easily available - you're just a typo away from accidentally tripping over a porn site. Record numbers of women are dabbling in OF-style sex work. In the case of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, they practically grew up on the stuff. Pornography is also shaping sexual norms that are disturbing. For instance, there has been a rise in the frequency at which women are choked during sex. That comes from pornography, which has been only deepening mistrust, misunderstanding, disrespect, and animosity between the sexes. The crippling effect pornography has on the ability to form and have a healthy relationship cannot be understated.

The very fact that we're even talking about people not having sex as the problem is already a sign that we have a deranged relationship with sex. It's not about sex as if it were some decontextualized recreational activity that is failing to hit quotas. It has a place, and outside of its legitimate narrow confines, it becomes an act of violence, an instrument of power, and an act of exploitation and abuse. The social fallout is incalculable. Consent doesn't wave that away.

> The kids in my community are being taught age-appropriate, consent-based sex ed, and the availability of free, high-quality sex ed is improving.

Sex ed has been around for a long time, and one of its common faults is that it decontextualizes sex, and second, doesn't and can't give you "just the facts", but actively promotes and shapes unhealthy attitudes toward what is acceptable sexual behavior. Sexual ethics is reduced to mere consent, at best. To say the problem is that we don't have enough sex ed is like saying communism failed because it didn't communism hard enough.

Sex is not a toy. It's a powerful and sacred act. FAFO. That we are not horrified by the state of sexual relations and sexual disorder is a testament to the numbing effect our disorder has. For centuries, it was known to great moral teachers that one of the "daughters of lust" (where lust is not healthy sexual desire, but one not proportioned by reason) is a darkening of the mind.

So, yes, community is important, but it needs a basis, and a deep one, but the point of a community is not to supply you with sexual experiences. If your community begins operating like some kind of sex market, it will dissolve and right so, because it will have become a seedy hive of sexual perversion, coercion, and unhealthy relations.

The sexual relationship is the glue of family and through that of society. Mess with it, and prepare for hell.

[mcphage]

> You can't watch a movie for 5 minutes without having your face rubbed in a sex scene

The frequency of sex scenes in movies has been dropping for a while.

[platevoltage]

I've never thought about this but I think you're right. I always hated these. I like having it, I don't like watching people pretend to have it.

[trod1234]

Its actually quite a bit worse than you think, but to recognize what's happening you have to understand how torture and the developing mind work to some small degree.

Thought reform, which is sophisticated science based techniques that impose stress and increase suggestability, almost to the point of mindlessness,are torture that have been imposed in varying ways to kids and teens. The entire process of centralized education embraces this through Paulo Freire's pedagogy which is most National Teachers Union members; like "Lying to Children", or by-rote teaching (two faces same coin).

When you succumb to torture, you adopt characteristics of the torturer that are reflected. The torturer can distort that reflection for purpose, and in general its a state of involuntary hypnosis. This same state can be induced through distorting reflected appraisal through media. Its not the type of torture you see caracicaturized in media. It leverages perceptual blindspots to induce psychological instability.

When the girls are taught that attractive qualities in men are unattractive or crazy, and the guys are taught the same thing; there is an age range where those core identity beliefs are adopted and crystallized to carry forward the rest of their lives. It takes great personal suffering to overcome any of these, let alone recognize them.

The behavior promoted is almost and mimics similar behaviors or mannerisms that occur in schizophrenics, and is one sign that a person may have been tortured. In addition to what you mention, this has been occuring for decades, and the economic consequences have only gotten worse, and the environment has only ever marched toward disadvantaged.

The world created by the aggregate of older adults today is a hellscape for their children, but most of these slothful (complacent) people have willfully blinded themselves to the reality of their actions.

For example dating websites where you are never matched up to someone that is long-term compatible, effectively being pigeonholed into a eugenics experiment since the strategy the company uses to guarantee profit is the same strategy the USDA uses to eradicate parasites through sterility.

Whenever these type of dynamics occur, chaos sustainably grows until the systems involved can no longer correct, as a positive feedback system. All the way to catastrophe.

Aside from food security, when you make social life unlivable and intolerable. When you deprive children who become adults, of lifes joy through conditioned indoctrination and torture. You have as a group stolen their future. The ones that did nothing are equally responsible as the ones that moved it towards that state.

There is a critical point where they will realize what has been done to them, because you can't fool everyone always. When that occurs, the law won't save the old. Absent a functioning rule of law (which we don't have), violence will be the only option to these people, and they will have nothing to lose.

Chickens come home to roost eventually. Evil doesn't need to know its evil to be evil. All it needs to do is be willfully blind. Thomas Paine said it best when he referred to "Dead Men Ruling."

Books:

Robert Cialdini (1990s) - Influence - Covers perceptual blindspots

Robert Lifton (1950s) - Thought Reform & Totalism - Detailed Case Studies of Torture

Joost Meerloo (1950s) - Rape of the Mind - Covers the broad topic of torture and thought reform; has some dating.

Chase Hughes - Ellipsis - The material in this domain is highly fragmented across many subfields, he aggregates most of the important parts of modern thought reform (1970s+) into NCI, including Cults, Cointelpro, Kubark, and others. Author was a professional military interrogator/behavioral modification expert (iirc).

Torture/Modern Thought Reform is recognized by its Elements, Structuring, and Clustering, and the last group is often addiction linked following lines of Narco-synthesis/analysis through dopamine triggering/conditioning.

Unfortunately, you probably won't see this post long. HN has a lot of bots, automatons, or despicable people that don't want harsh truths to see the light of day. Almost without fail within 30 minutes of linking to the reference material included, the posts get downvoted to invisibility despite being science backed and true.

Mind you nothing said here changes the reality of the dynamics. It will all happen the same regardless. The hiding is only an action that prevents a general forewarning to others as preparable time ahead of the associated collapse occurring.

There are a lot of people alive today that want to destroy everyone and everything they can.

Ivan Illyin seems to have been right with regards to his refutation of Tolstoy, and outcomes of evil.