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Millennials Are Less Likely To Be Having Sex Than Young Adults 30 Years Ago, Says Survey (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A survey of nearly 27,000 people suggests that millennials are less likely to be having sex than younger adults were 30 years ago. The Guardian reports: "The research, conducted in the U.S., found that the percentage of young adults aged between 20 and 24 who reported having no sexual partner after the age of 18 increased from 6% among those born in the 1960s, to 15% of young adults born in the 1990s. Published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior by researchers from three U.S. universities, the study involved the analysis of data collected through the nationwide General Social Survey that has asked U.S. adults about their sexual behavior almost every year since 1989. The results reveal that young adults aged between 20 and 24 and born in the 1990s were more than twice as likely to report that they had had no sexual partners since the age of 18 than young adults of the same age born in the 1960s. Just over 15% of the 90s-born group reported that they had not had sex since they turned 18, compared to almost 12% of those born in the 1970s or 1980s. For those born in the 60s the figure was just over 6%. The shift [towards increasing abstinence seen among all adults since the 1960s] was greater for white individuals, those who had not gone to university, and those who attended religious services. The trend was also greater for women than for men: the authors found that 2.3% of women born in the 1960s are sexually inactive, compared to 5.4% of those born in the 1990s. That, the authors suggest, could in part be down to a rise in so-called virginity pledges as well as concerns about social stigma. As for why this is the case, the authors of the study suggest it could have something to do with the fact that young people are living at home for longer, thus "stifling their sex life," and playing video games and consuming media in their free time. In addition, easy access to pornography may also be playing a role. A co-author of the research, Ryne Sherman, also suggests another factor could be that the way in which people interpret questions asked in the survey has changed. "Young people in the 1950s, when they were asked if you had a sexual partner, [might] say 'oh oral sex, that counts,' whereas young people today might say 'oh no that doesn't count because I didn't actually have sexual intercourse,'" he said.

16 of 643 comments (clear)

  1. NO MONEY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Read. My. Lips.

    They.
    Have.
    No.
    Money.

    Forget your bullshit socio-economic-policital-technobabble explanations. This isn't about cell-phones, or aids, or sex-ed, or work-life balances, or aids, or gender studies, or social media, or tv shows, or Donald fucking Trump!

    It's the economy stupid.

    Younger Millenials are fucked. They have less jobs, less stable jobs, less income, more debt, higher rents, etc, etc,... and most importantly less opportunity to buy a home. They cannot afford one, they will not be given a loan, they cannot hope to get the cash together to get on with their lives and pay for the dating scene. It's the economy stupid.

    This happened in Japan. It's happenning here. The sexy-time rate, house-buying rate, and baby popping rate are directly proportional to the opportunity and stability on offer to young people in society. Millenials have been fucked over to pay for Boomer's plummeting pensions and guess what, the goose has stopped laying the egg.

    It's the economy stupid.

    1. Re:NO MONEY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Younger Millennials are fucked.

      I thought the article's saying the opposite.

    2. Re:NO MONEY by swb · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If they're all poor who is stealing all their dates? I doubt the young women are sleeping with 40yos just because they have money.

      That's how it was when I was in my 20s, 30 years ago. And it's not like younger women with older men is some kind of new social concept nobody has ever heard of.

      Girls in their mid-20s often dated "established" guys with full time jobs, cars, and lots of disposable income. My peers and I just getting started financially all lamented it. You just couldn't get a young woman's interest if you didn't have money.

      At that time, too, I think a lot of women were very future-life oriented, too, looking at people they dated in terms of "could he be my husband?" which meant that the selection criteria was very resource focused.

      A friend's dad, who was in his late 40s and divorced, told us it was much easier once you hit your 40s if you were single. The pool of women were either divorced (and thus had criteria not based around the little house with a picket fence fantasy), never married and not interested in marriage, or were younger women with a preference for older more financially established man.

      I ended up married in my 40s, so I never got much of a chance to test this prediction.

  2. Kids these days... by w0mprat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Drug use, alcohol use, smoking is in decline, not just in the USA but in most developed nations. Violent crime of many kinds is also on the decline in developed nations too. In some categories these stats are quite dramatic (homicide and drug use in particular have halved since all time highs in 80s/90s, wow).

    In fact I am very genuinely concerned that kids these days don't party as hard as we did. In fact it's been years since I've had to tell any to get off my lawn!

    --
    After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
  3. It is simple by peragrin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    it isn't because they don't have money, sex is cheap, it is convincing the girl to have sex that can get expensive.

    It is because they have more things to do, the freedom to do them, and options.

    50 years ago the average age a couple married and started popping out kids was 20.
    30 Years ago the average age a couple married and started popping out kids was 22.
    The last time I looked it was 28 and rising quickly.

    18 may start your adult life, but you need 4 years of college to earn more than $50k a year for the rest of your life.(yes some exceptions are available but not that many)
    Then you get to 22 and you need to start working.

    50 years ago women were not even allowed to buy a car or home without a male cosigner. (Equal credit act wasn't passed until 1974)

    We gave women freedom, they no longer need to be bound fiscally, physically,or socially to a man to survive. This is the natural result. Why people can't understand it or find it shocking proves just how stupid they are.

    --
    i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    1. Re:It is simple by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Sex isn't cheap. You need privacy, and privacy is expensive. You might be lucky and get it at your parent's house, but chances are you will have to pay for it. Dorm rooms, rented apartments, mortgaged houses. None of them are cheap.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  4. Most obvious finding by duckintheface · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The summary ignores the most obvious finding: Far fewer men are having sex than women. If the virginity rate is 15% in the 90's-born population as a whole and 5% among 90's-born women, the then rate among 90's-born men must be about 25%.

    It also means that a significant fraction of the men are having multiple partners. The women may also be having multiple partners but the data doesn't necessarily demonstrate that.

    --
    "He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
    1. Re:Most obvious finding by Deagol · · Score: 5, Insightful

      One of those dating sites published some stats a while back. The data was interesting.

      The take-away from the stats was that men tend to find average women attractive, whereas women only find above-average men attractive.

      So, where a dude who's a five is fine with a woman who's a 5, the woman who's a 5 is only responding to the 8's in the pool.

      80% of women are chasing the top 10% of men. And because even homely-looking ladies get carpet bombed by responses from dudes just hoping to get a nibble for a cast, they have inflated ideas of what their league actually is.

    2. Re:Most obvious finding by jittles · · Score: 5, Informative

      The summary ignores the most obvious finding: Far fewer men are having sex than women. If the virginity rate is 15% in the 90's-born population as a whole and 5% among 90's-born women, the then rate among 90's-born men must be about 25%.

      It also means that a significant fraction of the men are having multiple partners. The women may also be having multiple partners but the data doesn't necessarily demonstrate that.

      Or it means that millennial women prefer older men - which is my experience.

  5. Re:Inheriting from grandparents? by swb · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The grandparents are either still alive, active and living independently spending that money, or they're paying for expensive health care to keep their ailing bodies going, or they're living in an assisted care facility that costs $100k/year and requires you sign over all your assets.

    We're also kind of past the era where the "grandparent" generation easily acquired a lot of wealth in the form of meaningful hard assets like real estate. I think that was more common 1-2 generations ago, but in many ways the current grandparent generation probably came of age in the 1960s, got hammered in the stagflation of the 1970s during the peak of their earning power and then suffered the long-term stagnation of wages like everyone else.

    We're literally onto the 3rd or even 4th generation of "middle class" people who have lived in an era of stagnant wages which generally means stagnant or zero wealth accumulation, and much of the accumulated wealth they have ends up burned up by college tuition and health care.

  6. Re:It's slashdot by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 5, Funny

    Actually I thought the Milenials lack of sex, drugs & rock'n roll was because that's the only way they have left to rebel against their parents

    --

    Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

  7. The Beautiful Ones by xororand · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's not money but oversocialization and overpopulation.

    In the 1960s John B. Calhoun conducted extensive experiments with mice, examining changes in their social behavior in an Utopian world.
    Calhoun gave the mice clean housing and unlimited access to food.

    After day 600, the social breakdown continued and the population declined toward extinction. During this period females ceased to reproduce. Their male counterparts withdrew completely, never engaging in courtship or fighting. They ate, drank, slept, and groomed themselves – all solitary pursuits. Sleek, healthy coats and an absence of scars characterized these males. They were dubbed "the beautiful ones." Breeding never resumed and behavior patterns were permanently changed.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    A documentary on the subject:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    ---
    There's also a controversial opinion piece that partly aligns with Calhoun's scientific findings.
    Theodore Kaczynski's manifest "Industrial society and its future".
    http://editions-hache.com/essa...

    1. Re:The Beautiful Ones by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Funny

      That study was very cheesy and full of holes.

  8. Humbug by Bruce66423 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As a late member of the boomer generation I was able to get a job as a computer programmer that 2 years in enabled me to buy an apartment at 3 times that salary.

    25 years on I still live in the apartment. It's worth four times what I paid for it. If I was in the same job, I'd be on about twice what I was then. Therefore I wouldn't have a hope of getting on the property ladder, and wouldn't benefit from inflation to ensure that the real cost of my mortgage payments faded away. And that's before issues of exploding university debt etc.

    It's therefore true that boomers like me have benefited from an opportunity that has now gone to gain prosperity, and so it's the next generation that should get the leg up from the grandparents, not the boomers who've already benefited.

  9. Re:It's slashdot by meta-monkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    Dye your hair pink, get a dozen piercings, cut your dick off, change your name to Sally and have an orgy at the public library kids' section to protest transmisogyny and you'll be asked to speak at the DNC. Go shoot up a bunch of cops to protest racism and the worst the President do will is shrug and say things got "messy."

    Today being an unapologetic straight white Christian male is about the only subversive thing left you can do.

    --
    We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
  10. Re:Criminalization of expressions of masculinity by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1. Rough play and fighting (even is sports)

    Are you talking about rough play, sports or actually fighting. They're not the same. I can't think I've ever seen anyone[*] claim that playing rugger makes you evil. Starting fights after closing time however, you can keep that.

    2. Risk-taking of any kind

    that's just stupid and you're making it up.

    3. Hunting (especially with guns)

    We don't have much of a hunting culture here unless you're a toff and even then it's with dogs, not guns.

    4. Loyalty to your male friends

    Again, that's just stupid and you're making it up.

    5. Tinkering and do-it-yourself culture

    Third time, you're just making shit up. No one's revoked my SJW license for owning tools and actually using them.

    6. Self-reliance and individualism

    Are you talking about actual self reliance, or going your own way on ot the internet where you grouse about women and SJW?

    [*]The internet is big. If you can find one lone nutcase, that doesn't make it a trend.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.