One study looked at use of computer games among young people
True story. My freshman year of college some random gal asked a friend of mine to get me to come to a party. He called me up, put her on the phone.
I told her I was playing Unreal. (It was 1998)
She asked about my plans for the rest of the evening.
I told her I intended to continue playing Unreal. She thanked me for my time and we said goodbye.
Man.
In retrospect…
What a great game.
Yeah, then there’s that.
Also what Brainspore said; people don’t have sex only because they want to make babies.
Not sure why that very basic fact is difficult to grok, but apparently, some people just can’t wrap their heads around it…
That’s so unreal!
This article about Billie Eilish coming to terms with the difference between sex and the porn she started watching at 11(!) is really disturbing.
I started watching porn when I was like 11. I didn’t understand why it was a bad thing. I thought that’s how you learned how to have sex…I think that I had sleep paralysis and these night terrors slash nightmares because of it…I think that’s how it started because I would just watch abusive BDSM and that’s what I thought was attractive…And I was a virgin, I had never done anything, and it led to problems. The first few times I, you know, had sex, I was not saying no to things that were not good.
Those aren’t stories about kink, those are stories about assault.
Perhaps the stories are common because they have been found to be a reliable means of getting the attention of readers and thereby selling ad space?
Given the woeful backlog of sexual assault investigations in nearly every country on the planet, especially when the woman is the accuser, there must be something to it.
Cops can find time to follow black kids around a store but not investigate actual crime?
I’m not so interested in whether or not people are having less sex; I’m more interested in whether people are having less GOOD sex.
Maybe there was a huge drop-off in unwanted and semi–coerced sex due to the lessons of #metoo? That would make the trend of ‘less sex’ pretty much awesome.
Non-consensual kink is assault, that’s the point. Kink doesn’t ecist on some higher ground free from the baggage of gender and relationship dynamics.
Instead of guessing, trace the papers cited back, they studied many factors. The gloss is a gloss.
Bear with me here, but is it possible that maybe, just maybe…sex is a bit overrated?
Uhh.
Ah, there it is. Gotta double-check your premises!
Seriously, though, in addition to the fact that wealth inequality is at a peak not seen in a hundred years and most people can’t realistically afford kids even on two salaries, you need to add into the mix the fact that reproductive freedom of any sort is under sustained moralistic and often legal attack. If you can’t afford to (or don’t want to) have a baby, and you can’t get reliable access to birth control, you’re probably going to have less sex.
The fertility rate has, biologically speaking, dropped, worldwide, over the last several decades.
So, in an environment with limited resources (time) that can be spent on an ever increasing number of diversions (TV, games, movies, clubbing, bar hopping, texting, reading, sex, etc…), sex is losing market share?
Not really a surprise, is it?
I had a partner from a small town in MN (pop 500ish) who told me there was nothing to do “back home” except drink and have sex. I wonder if they ever got high speed internet, and if that would have changed things.
Reminds me of a study by Japan’s version of the RIAA back in the early aughts. They were trying to figure out why music sales were tanking. They found that while piracy was affecting revenues a little, the main culprit was cell phone and texting by the 14 - 25 yo demographic: “the kids” were spending their money on phones and texting rather than $30 CDs. Video games were in the mix, too, but not any big change from previous market share studies.
Well
the media grabbing hold of something, doesn’t mean it is a thing that is actually widespread. (e.g. the mass shoplifting panic, the Satanic panic, drugs in Halloween candy) For sure you can find anecdotal stories, just like you can find stories of horrible manipulative, gaslighting partners. But I’d like to see more actual data on this sort of thing before concluding “Yep, this is why people don’t want to have sex.”
Those are examples of sexual assault. Or committing murder and then trying to cover up with excuse of an accident during sex. Though I will grant you someone participating in kink with out the three tenements of “safe, sane, and consensual” are committing assault. Any sort of breath play needs to be discussed before hand with clear options to tap out and instantly stop an activity. If they aren’t, they are doing it wrong. Which, clearly from the articles linked to, some people are doing it wrong.
I wonder if that came out of the Hentai trope?
I too was playing Unreal in 1998 in college. But I totally would have gone to a party if invited by some random girl. 
It was a great game though!
I wonder if it correlates with a rise in depression.
I would guess the free availability of porn is one catalyst here. It used to be you had to fork out surprisingly high prices to buy a porno VHS, now the most hardcore stuff is right at your fingertips, and it numbs you to regular old “vanilla” sex.
{ETA: well, silly me, I see that’s literally the first comment up above. Note to self: next time read the thread before commenting]
Is this yet another thing that millennials are supposed to be killing?
Maybe, just maybe, people were lying about how much sex they had in earlier studies, or now, or some combination of that and poorly selected study groups?
Warning to the next generation: If your parents didn’t have sex, you probably won’t, either.
