"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it" - Indiana Jones
I'm not sure if Indiana Jones said that. In fact I'm pretty sure I just made that up completely.
It was certainly someone else who said it first, perhaps it was Hamlet, or Moby Dick. And, actually, it is unlikely that famous quote was something that was spoken by a fictional character, because that doesn’t really make sense.
So, while I’m now wondering who exactly said that particular phrase, and I feel like I’m going down a bit of a rabbit hole here, I only mentioned the phrase for another reason, not to launch into a whole conversation about who said it. So the point is this. When you hear “Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it”, it’s meant as sage advice.
What it means is that take my word for it, you don't want it to be you, who is the one who is the person whose doomed to be causing history to be repeating itself.
Now that I’ve got that housekeeping out of the way, let’s stop talking about history. Let’s talk about the future. Specifically, the future of sex.
It ain’t looking good. When I grew up in the 1890’s, getting laid happened in a popular place called reality. And whoever you were fornicating with was right there in the room with you. There were one or two candles burning, to soften the light reflecting off the Panasonic Cd player that was setting the mood with side 2 of Ritual de lo Habitual. There’s a lot of guitar solos on that album, very sensual. The 90’s were a sensual time.
But anyway, like everything else it has ruined, social media can now claim it is ruining the most primordial desire of the human species, by tying that desire up in confusing knots.
A research study completed in 2020 found that between 2000 and 2018, sexual activity decreased significantly among US adults, and decreased the most among younger men. The survey study found that from 2000 to 2018, sexual activity decreased among US men such that approximately 1 in 3 men aged 18-24 years reported no sexual activity in the past year. Between 2000-2002 and 2016-2018, the proportion of 18-24 year-old individuals who reported having had no sexual activity in the past year increased among men from 19% to 31%.
This was not limited to that age group, sexual activity also declined among men and women aged 24-35. In those groups individuals reporting having had no sexual activity in the past year increased for both men, from 7.0% to 14.% and women from 7.0% to 12.6%.
The report can be found here. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7293001/
So, the combined number of male and females in the US aged 18-24 and 25-34 is less than 50 million people today. Using the ratios observed in the study, of approximately 22 million males aged 24-35, 3.2 million are having no sex, reflecting a decrease of 1.1 million males between 2000-2002 and 2016-2018. Of approximately 22 million females aged 24-35, 2.7 million are having no sex, reflecting a decrease of about 1.1 million between 2000-2002 and 2016-2018.
So 6 million people between 24-35 years old have no sex life. And that is 2.2 million more than in 2000-2002. What does this all mean?
Within the past two decades society has witnessed a steep decline in adults in the prime of their life having sex. This is actually kind of bad. Why is it happening, one is naturally going to ask.
The study authors offer some possibilities, but no clear culprit is presented in the study.
For example, rates of depression and anxiety have increased among young US adults; US adolescents are increasingly postponing the start of adult activities, including sex and dating25; and it has been hypothesized that the introduction of smartphones has resulted in less opportunity for and skills in real-world human interactions.
Keep in mind something extremely important the authors of this study are scientists. They are not editorializing about social media and smartphones just because its fun to pick on those things. They are sincerely offering a causal mechanism for this change in behavior, as an actual scientific statement.
I feel like it would be easy to overlook the significance of that, so I want to emphasize it. These are not pundits on TV, they’re scientists looking for actual answers.
That fact makes me take this quite seriously, because this isn’t a hypothetical possibility. It’s already happened. It isn’t a serious problem we may encounter some day if we don’t try to address it. It is a decline that has already been going on for a couple decades.
So, are 18-35 year olds more insufferable now at least partly because so many are frustrated and experiencing no human intimacy?
Why wouldn’t that be true?