The Art of Manliness - #464： What's Causing the Sex Recession？

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast studies show

00:00:19.340 that people especially young people are having less sex than past generations did and while

00:00:23.820 many may celebrate this decline as a good thing the reasons behind the drop in sex may not all

00:00:28.900 be so positive a decline in physical intimacy may potentially speak to a decline in emotional

00:00:33.820 intimacy and a struggle modern folks are having with connecting with each other my guest explores

00:00:38.180 this decline in sexual frequency as a way into these larger cultural and relational questions

00:00:42.400 in our long-form cover story for this month's atlantic magazine her name is kate julian today

00:00:46.380 we discuss her piece entitled the sex recession on why people are counterintuitively having less sex

00:00:51.620 in a time when sex is less taboo and more accessible than ever before we begin our conversation

00:00:56.280 highlighting the statistics that indicate young americans are having less sex and whether this

00:01:00.220 decline holds true for other countries and affects married people as well as singles kate then delves

00:01:04.700 into the idea that the reasons for why young people are having less sex may suggest deeper issues and

00:01:09.680 how people are relating or not relating to each other these reasons include the way dating apps are

00:01:14.700 shaping in-person interactions prevalence of porn an increase in anxiety and depression amongst young

00:01:19.880 people we end our conversation by raising the question of why people continue to perpetuate

00:01:24.000 relational patterns that don't seem to be making them happy it's a fascinating discussion i know

00:01:28.360 some of you listen to the podcast with your kids due to the mature nature of the show i'd have them

00:01:32.720 skip this one after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash sex recession kate joins

00:01:37.820 me now via clearcast.io kate julian welcome to the show thank you so much for having me

00:01:54.000 so you recently published an article in the atlantic that's gone viral everyone's talking about it

00:01:58.420 and it's about how there's a sex recession going on in america right now people are having less sex

00:02:05.600 so start off where what are the data points that tell us that people particularly young people are

00:02:11.780 having less sex nowadays so my jumping off point for this piece is a series of research done by gene

00:02:18.080 twenge who's a psychologist at san diego state she published over the past few years a series of

00:02:23.800 four articles in the archives of sexual behavior about the way people's sex lives were changing the

00:02:29.720 part of this that struck me as most counterintuitive was her finding that sexual frequency had declined

00:02:34.740 among adults from something like 62 times a year on average to 54 times a year on average between the

00:02:41.320 late 90s in 2014 now for a given person that's not a huge drop you might not even notice it that both

00:02:47.500 numbers are about once a week but across the whole country it seems to me or it seemed to me i should

00:02:54.180 say really counterintuitive that in the age of all of these things that we think of as as enhancing sex

00:03:00.280 that people would be having less of it so from there i dug into it and started to look at the young

00:03:05.020 people part of this more specifically and found some other surprising numbers i can go into those

00:03:10.740 people you know are launching their sex lives later they are more likely according to twenge's

00:03:16.920 research to be as abstinent or celibate in their 20s two and a half times more likely compared to gen x

00:03:23.080 or baby boomers they're also on track people in their 20s are on track to have fewer lifetime sexual

00:03:29.080 partners than those other two generations and it's not just sex it's like also things just

00:03:34.800 like that lead up to sex like making out kissing like that's also decreasing as well right that's

00:03:41.100 what that is what it's what seems to be happening now i do want to be really clear here about two

00:03:47.300 things the first is i'm i'm using sex as a way into the sort of larger question of relationships and

00:03:53.660 intimacy so where you're going with this is absolutely you know speaking to the heart of what

00:03:58.520 i'm curious about here the problem is we don't have a lot of data on things like holding hands and

00:04:04.440 kissing and the like right this is not something that studies have really looked at on a big on a

00:04:09.100 large scale most research on adolescence looks at specific outcomes you know did they get pregnant

00:04:14.980 do they have a disease that type of thing um there's much less asking about sort of more qualitative

00:04:20.520 experiences of relationship and connection to other people i did find it striking though that when i

00:04:26.040 went sort of trying to dig into anything that we could use sort of as a baseline there's one major

00:04:32.040 study of adolescence in the mid 90s called ad health that found that of 17 year old girls and

00:04:37.420 boys 66 percent of boys and 74 percent of women or girls had said they had had what they called a

00:04:44.540 special romantic relationship and then another big survey in 2014 found that had gone down to 46

00:04:52.220 percent and in fact the later survey used an even broader definition they included like hooking up or

00:04:58.360 something like that so it seems like 70 you know 74 percent to 46 percent in in really just 20 years

00:05:05.620 it's kind of an amazing change yeah so like the high school crush or dating thing that's not happening

00:05:11.020 as much it seems like it there is some research that looks at the question of dating and then this

00:05:15.880 turns into this thing about like do people say dating anymore is that word dated so to speak

00:05:20.380 but but it does sort of track with other things we've seen other research by the same scholar

00:05:26.220 gene twangay that was published in a book last year called igen found that over the last 10 years

00:05:31.220 there's been a pretty marked decline in a lot of things we think of as going with adolescence

00:05:34.920 so things that might actually be connected to to having flirtation or romance or whatever you want

00:05:41.040 to call it with with another person uh getting your driver's license going out of the house without

00:05:46.540 your parents these things have dropped off quite a bit now is this a just an american phenomenon or is

00:05:51.600 this happening in other countries as well this is what i found most fascinating when i started to

00:05:56.160 look into all of this most countries i should say do not study their citizen sex lives but the

00:06:01.780 countries that do have serious ongoing surveys that that speak to this stuff most of which tend to be

00:06:08.280 wealthy countries are finding similar similar trends so in japan in australia in the uk in the netherlands

00:06:18.280 and in the finland and in finland i should say similar trends are being noted and in japan i mean

00:06:22.760 it's really stark because i mean i think for the past decade or so we've been seeing articles about

00:06:26.660 i don't know these shut-ins i don't know what they call them vegetable leaders or herb eaters

00:06:30.980 whatever yeah this is this is such an interesting term in japan for the past i think 15 years or so

00:06:37.760 there's been this recognition of a category of young men who are just totally uninterested in romantic

00:06:43.280 experiences they call them sort of direct translation is herbivore men or grass-eating men

00:06:49.400 that's what they're known as they're and the question then sort of becomes what led this

00:06:53.980 generation you know what what led this generation to kind of turn away from interest in in romance and

00:06:59.660 marriage and it seems that they're you know the root cause of it probably is really an economic one

00:07:04.800 that this coincided with really you know the the japanese economy sinking into the doldrums and the

00:07:12.760 kind of dating culture there for the second half of the 20th century was really focused on

00:07:18.420 meeting people in the workplace that was the standard normal socially acceptable way to meet

00:07:23.120 somebody and when young men and young women were no longer you know company men and women anymore

00:07:29.060 people didn't actually know how to go about it and moreover what sort of dating culture did exist

00:07:33.980 was pretty expensive to participate in and if you're a young man without a job it was really hard to

00:07:39.440 to go there and so digital entertainment and staying at home became pretty quickly really appealing

00:07:46.280 and then various you know products and industries porn and not porn related sort of sprung up to

00:07:52.060 to indulge that tendency and is this happening across like is it it's imagine single people are

00:07:58.400 having less sex but are married people like married young people having less sex too or is this

00:08:01.640 probably a singles problem well there are two parts to that i mean the short answer is

00:08:06.980 one big cause of what we're seeing is that fewer people who are under 35 are living with a spouse

00:08:14.840 or a partner and for all that people like to joke about married people not having sex anymore if you

00:08:19.720 live with a sexual partner you are just going to have more sex over the course of the year than

00:08:23.740 somebody who doesn't you know a third of of people under 35 are living adults under 35 i should say are

00:08:30.560 living with a parent that's you know higher than it's been in a very long time and it's actually more

00:08:35.940 common than any other living arrangement so obviously if you're not living with a partner

00:08:39.520 more so if you're living with your parents this is going to have an effect on your sex life

00:08:43.600 but twangay's research does suggest that even people who are in relationships are having sex

00:08:48.960 less across most generational groups and then that sort of raises a question of sort of what may be going

00:08:54.880 on to make even sort of long-term couples compared to their predecessors be physically intimate less

00:09:01.360 sex so you know a lot of parents ministers educators will probably see this decline in young people

00:09:08.320 hooking up having sex a good thing because you know there's a decrease in teen pregnancy rates which

00:09:14.060 is you know a good thing people have been we've been working on that since you know the 50s basically

00:09:18.660 stds are down but as you said like this this whole idea of people having less sex it it speaks to a

00:09:25.240 larger issue of just about how humans are relating today and maybe people having less sex can indicate

00:09:31.440 that something below you know that is going on that's causing people to have less sex what's going

00:09:38.360 on there you think yeah so i actually want to pause and just linger on the first part of what you said

00:09:42.760 which is key and i don't want that to be lost in all of this the fact that teenage the teenage

00:09:47.160 pregnancy rate is a third of what it was a third of what it was in the early 90s is a remarkable

00:09:52.720 and good development i mean that's terrific and there are other parts of this that are really

00:09:57.560 good as well some of which i talk about in the piece and some of which i don't more people now

00:10:01.940 are likely than in the past to say that their first sexual experience whenever it happened was

00:10:06.300 wanted and welcome that is terrific so they're really i you know i don't see that there's any rush

00:10:11.520 it's not that i'm decrying or the the sort of delay of teenagers having sex or young adults having sex

00:10:18.320 but what i am curious about is what's causing this if the thing that were causing this to happen was

00:10:24.840 essentially for lack of a better word a positive thing then i would be you know applauding it right

00:10:31.380 if people are doing this because they feel more comfortable saying no because they have other

00:10:38.280 occupations that are keeping them happy and fulfilled and allowing them to connect to people in

00:10:42.340 other ways like that would be a terrific thing and for some people those things are probably true

00:10:47.240 i've talked to some people who who you know were not in sexual relationships and were not interested

00:10:53.140 in their 20s and romantic relationships because they were busy with work and school and had really

00:10:57.160 wonderful rich lives what i'm more concerned about is the sort of large number of people i talked to who

00:11:03.360 felt very stuck and frustrated and like they didn't know how to meet somebody and they were really

00:11:09.600 having trouble making connections not just sexual connections but really i would say sort of

00:11:14.040 relationship connections more broadly not just physical intimacy but emotional intimacy well you

00:11:19.760 mentioned one thing there that one reason people are putting off young people are putting off sexual

00:11:23.800 relationships is that they've invested more into their professional and academic success over not just

00:11:29.180 sex but just relationships um why is that why are young people today more focused on that you know than

00:11:36.040 say maybe their parents or grandparents well so you know all of these generalizations are obviously tricky

00:11:41.940 but i do think people now in their 20s have a lot of sort of economic uncertainty that they're having

00:11:48.520 to grapple with which may make this seem like less of an immediate priority i mean a lot of a lot of

00:11:53.820 people i spoke to honestly were so sober and responsible and were like i have to get my education taken

00:11:59.940 care of you know i i'm still living at home you know if i can't even figure out how to sort of pay for

00:12:05.220 my own apartment i shouldn't even be worrying about this next step there was a notion that things need to

00:12:09.620 happen in a certain order part of the problem though is i think that order is a little bit outdated

00:12:15.200 that is people are sort of holding themselves to the standards of their parents generation even though

00:12:20.520 some of the jobs and other things that may have supported their parents ability to connect and get

00:12:25.000 married in their 20s just aren't really there and people are really having to patch together

00:12:28.940 multiple jobs and sort of function in the gig economy and all that all that stuff so yeah people feel

00:12:35.340 like they have to have a job and a house and all that before they get married it seems like and i

00:12:39.600 mean we've seen for a while that as marriage rates were declining and also as people were delaying

00:12:43.720 marriage that marriage seemed like it was sort of some scholars have described it as a capstone like

00:12:47.880 something you you looked to when everything else in your life was together and i wonder if something

00:12:52.440 similar is happening with romantic relationships general like generally like i shouldn't even be worrying

00:12:57.180 about that until i see myself being on a track where i would be looking for my lifetime partner

00:13:01.280 so a lot of young people are prioritizing work and study over relationships romantic relationships

00:13:08.040 but at the same time you cite a study in your article that you know the majority of students

00:13:13.080 or young people wish they had more opportunities to find a long-term boyfriend or girlfriend um and

00:13:19.960 like college is like the best time to do that because you're just with a bunch of peers your age

00:13:24.620 and that's not happening so what's going on are young people just sort of caught between two

00:13:29.080 contradictory desires that desire to get ahead but also start a relationship i think so i think so

00:13:34.820 and i think that there's a notion with sort of hookup culture that you kind of have to choose

00:13:43.100 between casual sex and no sex and i think that has sort of left a fairly large group of people out in

00:13:50.040 the whole sort of in the cold so to speak some of the sort of more recent research on so-called hookup

00:13:55.360 culture really has shown that a lot of the way that we talk about it and think about it isn't really

00:13:59.540 quite right so you know it's not something that most people are engaging in with wild abandon

00:14:05.040 it's something that maybe sort of you know 20-25 percent of people are really active participants in

00:14:10.540 and other people may be sitting it out all together and i think you know i talked to people

00:14:14.720 who felt that on campus they they hadn't really known how to go about you know finding something

00:14:20.700 outside of hookup culture and i think this sort of bridges to another interesting point about dating

00:14:26.460 apps for people who are in their 20s which is to say that apps have become really really sort of

00:14:33.100 ubiquitous over a pretty short period of time i mean we've had these things for only 10 years or so and

00:14:38.560 by some measures they've become the most common way of meeting people and on the one hand you know

00:14:43.440 that clearly that that very marker suggests that they are working for a lot of people right

00:14:48.300 but it's pretty clear to me from looking at the data that they're really not working for a lot of

00:14:53.860 other people and what i heard in my interviews with young people was this sort of refrain that

00:14:59.540 like that's the accepted way to find somebody now and yet it's not really working very well for me for

00:15:04.480 for a variety of reasons and so what do i do like i don't know how to meet somebody outside the apps

00:15:09.160 well let's talk let's dig into that a little deeper because yeah the dating apps and even like

00:15:13.000 dating websites is supposed to make dating more efficient right you go to a place where you know

00:15:17.940 everyone is there looking for a romantic partner but as you the research suggests that people

00:15:23.860 actually they're not that effective at fighting finding a romantic partner through dating apps so

00:15:27.980 tell us to the walks through the data so so so again there you know there is a there's a positive

00:15:32.800 side here like people who according to one set of research i looked at people who meet through an app

00:15:37.700 who are sort of interested in a long-term relationship are more likely to get married more quickly than people

00:15:42.620 who meet other ways so for people who really sort of are doing this effectively it obviously can be

00:15:48.320 super efficient the problem is that many people are spending just a kind of unfathomable amount of

00:15:55.520 time on these things the last time that tinder for example released this data i know it in the piece

00:16:00.480 the average user was spending an hour and a half a day on the app now when you combine that

00:16:05.400 you know when you compare that to sort of usage for other types of apps like facebook or instagram or

00:16:10.080 whatever it's a really really big number similarly they log i think the latest data they gave me 1.6

00:16:17.200 billion swipes a day and those lead to just 26 million matches and when i started digging into

00:16:23.280 that okay so what happens once once people have matched on the app i as a person who sort of met

00:16:29.660 my husband before dating apps were a thing was kind of shocked at how inefficient it was even at that

00:16:35.100 point there's this guy named simon i talked to who is really really interesting he went into a

00:16:40.020 long-term relationship in 2007 right before sort of apps hit the scene and came out of it in

00:16:45.620 2014 when he was around 30 and found that you know the very sort of landscape of sort of chatting

00:16:52.760 somebody up in a bar seemed really different than it had when he'd gone into the relationship it just

00:16:57.620 seemed less acceptable because there was this other way that you were supposed to do things now

00:17:01.420 and so he gamely signed up for all the apps and yet he found that this you know he described himself

00:17:08.280 as not super you know physically attractive he said you know i'm short i'm balding all of this

00:17:13.600 i'm funny you know i do historically have done pretty well with the ladies because i'm funny

00:17:18.040 but i don't necessarily like look great on tinder and he found that even once he sort of had a match

00:17:23.680 with somebody he was he was swiping right for every match he he made on tinder and then

00:17:29.880 for everybody he matched with he would send a text message and he would only hear back

00:17:33.860 he figured he was quite a numbers oriented guy he only heard back from like one in ten of these women

00:17:38.980 which means essentially you know he's swiping right 300 times for everybody he has a text exchange with

00:17:45.740 so i mean you know he kept with it because he's a dogged guy and he's now in a long-term relationship

00:17:51.680 and he's really happy but you can imagine somebody who doesn't have the sort of time or

00:17:55.700 robustness to keep with it just feeling really confused and rejected by that

00:17:59.760 scenario yeah and that's one of the you just mentioned one of the downsides it seems that

00:18:03.340 these dating apps favor people who are attractive right is that how it typically works out yeah

00:18:09.140 there's a fascinating study that came there's a fascinating study that came out in august i think

00:18:13.900 that that sort of where they took dating profiles a large number of dating profiles and

00:18:18.760 sort of managed to independently kind of rate the physical attractiveness of the people which

00:18:23.220 obviously is a tricky thing because people like different things but be that as it may and then

00:18:27.600 they looked at sort of what types of you know how that correlated with people's matching or swiping

00:18:33.380 behavior and they found that the average user tends to swipe on people who are 25 percent more

00:18:37.960 attractive than they are which doesn't seem like a great recipe for success and you have this sort of

00:18:43.240 vision of like you know a man swiping right on a woman who's pretty hot and then she's swiping right

00:18:49.740 on a guy who's really really good looking and so forth and none of them are actually connecting

00:18:54.540 so but yeah that's one of the and when you when you take all your dating online and you're only

00:18:59.880 judging based on physical appearance like with this one guy you miss out on the humor the fact that he's

00:19:06.220 so smart and funny right right yeah absolutely i mean look people can obviously if you know if they

00:19:12.800 push forward and engage in a texting relationship with the person you know they they as simon did you

00:19:18.880 know get a chance to show off their their wonderful sense of humor and some of their other qualities

00:19:23.200 but you don't get as many cues about a person as you do you sort of in in an in-person interaction

00:19:29.640 you just don't but as you said because dating has almost completely shifted to online with these apps

00:19:37.040 now if you want to go out and like approach someone in public uh in in meet space as they say

00:19:44.460 like that's that's now creepy because you're not supposed to do that well that's what i heard in my

00:19:49.340 interviews and i have to say this is one of the things that really startled me and there's no

00:19:52.640 data to sort of you know establish how much this is the case but it came up again and again and again

00:19:59.860 that people just felt even especially people who are a little bit older who you like maybe in their

00:20:04.360 early 30s now you've been at this for a while that it had become less socially acceptable to talk to

00:20:09.120 people you know spontaneously in person i think that's interesting it sort of suggests that maybe

00:20:15.560 maybe part of this is due to dating apps you know that's become sort of the acceptable way to

00:20:20.220 meet people and it's like well that's what you're doing go there another part of it may be phones

00:20:24.100 and i hate to blame phones for everything because it sort of seems really predictable but it does seem

00:20:28.400 to me that the way we sort of hang out in public spaces now when we're not busy is really different

00:20:33.580 than it was you know i'm saying the piece that i met my husband on an elevator but i haven't been

00:20:38.200 on an elevator recently where people were just sort of having random chats with strangers

00:20:42.100 we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show and do you

00:20:48.460 but do you get as you talk to these people do you get the sense that okay this is the way things are

00:20:52.620 but are people happy with it like do they would they like to be in a world where they could just

00:20:57.020 chat up a stranger in public and you know possibly kick off a relationship from that well this is

00:21:02.480 such an interesting question i mean i do think there might be a little bit of romanticizing the past

00:21:07.540 right because i would sort of mention this experience meeting my husband to people sometimes

00:21:12.620 as we were chatting about ways people met people would often talk about the way their parents met

00:21:16.780 and sort of sigh and say i couldn't really meet the way that my parents met and then when i said to

00:21:21.700 them well here's how i met and what would happen if somebody started talking to you on elevator i'd get

00:21:25.420 this kind of weird split screen response of like oh my god i would love that and then if somebody did

00:21:30.040 that i would actually probably think they were weird now i will say one of the lovely things about

00:21:34.660 publishing this piece has been that i have heard some like wonderful kind of you know stories of

00:21:39.160 people who in the recent past met people on elevators and trains and you know all the rest of it um

00:21:46.880 so it certainly can be done and i hope some people maybe will be inspired to go out and prove that

00:21:51.060 i'm wrong but yeah it did seem that you know i heard more than i expected people saying has it

00:21:57.300 always been this hard and i really wish that i you know a number of people just volunteered to me

00:22:02.860 like without any prompting i wish i had met you know i wish i were dating before smartphones and

00:22:07.820 apps yeah and you continue on this idea of how social wars have changed you know rapidly i mean

00:22:13.660 you cited a study that millennials are more likely to consider you know a guy asking a woman out to

00:22:19.260 drinks as sexual harassment as opposed to a baby boomer they'd be like well that's just what that's

00:22:23.700 normal yeah yeah no so i mean this is i found this number kind of stunning i don't have it in front of

00:22:30.080 it's close to 20 percent of people i think in their 20s so sort of younger millennials and gen z even

00:22:36.320 think that a man asking a woman out for a drink is always or usually sexual harassment and of course

00:22:42.100 that means that you know 80 something percent don't think that but the fact that that many people do

00:22:47.020 is really stunning to me and it's a much higher rate than with boomers or gen xers and obviously you

00:22:52.480 know work is a lot of where we spend our time so if if it really is not acceptable to i mean obviously i

00:22:59.200 don't i'm not supporting people hitting on their subordinates there's been some you know really

00:23:03.900 disturbing revelations in the wake of me too about people really taking advantage of workplace

00:23:08.620 situations but i think that that whole discussion has perhaps led to a real pause and people are not

00:23:14.300 really sure what is and isn't acceptable and that's confusing things further as you were talking

00:23:19.000 to these uh people you interviewed for the story you know and they're talking about the dating apps

00:23:22.620 like it sounded like they weren't happy a lot of them weren't happy with it but why did they keep

00:23:26.840 using them like what did they say it's like well is this like it's because that's the only thing

00:23:29.680 they had i mean what was going on there one of the fascinating things was how many people i talked

00:23:35.320 to who are using the apps even though they weren't actually interested in meeting somebody i thought

00:23:39.840 that was really interesting so where it was almost just like one more it was almost a game

00:23:44.720 it was a there's a woman who i call iris in the piece who first said this to me she said it's

00:23:49.240 been gamified and i didn't really get what she meant by that at first and then i kept hearing the

00:23:53.400 same thing again and again and again from people who would say yeah i'll download the app when i'm

00:23:58.200 bored watching tv sort of a diversion and that helps to explain sort of how we could get to a

00:24:03.360 situation like the one that the that's the guy i call simon experienced where he's having to swipe

00:24:08.020 right for 300 times for a single text exchange which is that people are just sort of idly doing it

00:24:12.660 it's maybe a quick kind of dopamine hit ego boost to see if somebody will swipe right back on you it

00:24:17.860 makes you feel good temporarily you know one woman i talked to described it as like a bubble popping game

00:24:22.580 so it does seem to be you know obviously for a lot of people it is a way to meet people in real life

00:24:28.180 but for other people it's it's more of a diversion so they're using it like instagram exactly yeah okay

00:24:33.880 so another factor that came up in your research as you delved into this is about the role of porn and

00:24:39.440 masturbation and that's been increasing even in the past like what 20 years so what effects are that

00:24:45.760 having well so this is yeah so this is interesting so the the data we have suggests that the number

00:24:52.740 of people who say that they've masturbated in the last week has doubled since the early 90s to a bit

00:24:58.460 over 50 of men and a more a little bit it tripled for women i should say a bit over a quarter now many

00:25:04.780 people after i published the piece sort of said that's bs like everybody masturbates the people who

00:25:09.980 still don't say that they're doing it are lying i can't really speak to that but it is interesting

00:25:14.460 that the percentage of people who admit doing it who say that they do it has gone up so much and

00:25:19.860 part of that may be due to sort of decreasing social stigma one of the things that i was really

00:25:23.920 interested in as i was digging into all of this was just how stigmatized masturbation was through

00:25:30.000 much of the 20th century that isn't something i'd really focused on but it really came up in my

00:25:33.940 reading so but but let's assume that it has doubled you know that that doubling you know is

00:25:39.620 partially due to probably decreased taboos it's absolutely obviously got to do with the

00:25:45.320 availability of digital porn for women it seems to have something to do also with the availability

00:25:50.380 of vibrators one fairly recent study found that half of women have used them which we don't have

00:25:56.140 a baseline for but every researcher i spoke to thinks is undoubtedly a big increase from the past and

00:26:01.840 as i say in the piece amazon has something like 10 000 different models available so that's a big

00:26:07.280 factor too but then the question becomes is this substituting for sex or is it like its whole

00:26:12.680 own occupation and for different people the answer is probably different and this turns out to be a

00:26:17.760 really hard question to get out in research because guess what people who have higher sex drives

00:26:22.760 use porn more and masturbate more and they also tend to have sex more so it's very hard to sort of

00:26:28.940 tease out you know cause and effect so yeah but like think you talked about you know the the use of

00:26:34.940 porn or young people particularly learning about sex through porn is making sex kind of weird and

00:26:40.620 like uncomfortable for a lot of people yeah absolutely so so i guess backing up just a little

00:26:46.260 bit on the porn question there's been so much attention i don't know whether you've talked about

00:26:50.100 this at all on your podcast to to sort of there's this whole sort of anti-masturbation movement it's

00:26:55.260 playing out in various nofap yeah nofap fight the new drug is one that's more porn oriented

00:27:02.180 obviously the two are connected the the sort of far right proud boys group has a sort of what they

00:27:07.220 call no wanking policy this is this is really become sort of over a short period of time sort

00:27:13.120 of a big movement and one of the things that i found really interesting is that many of the things

00:27:18.020 that that are asserted seem to be controversial you know for example the notion that porn is addictive

00:27:23.820 that's really controversial and the scientific evidence is pretty mixed but there is some research

00:27:30.160 that suggests that thinking that porn and masturbation are bad for you tends to be the

00:27:34.800 biggest predictor of whether you're you know sexually dysfunctional which i thought was really

00:27:39.200 fascinating it's this idea that like if you believe that it's bad for you whether because of your

00:27:43.100 religious beliefs or some other similar set of beliefs that tends to be almost self-fulfilling

00:27:47.120 i thought that was really interesting and then i think there is a separate set of questions apart

00:27:51.980 from whether or not porn or masturbation are substituting from sex which goes to what you just said

00:27:56.500 which is what happens when you learn when you have sort of on-demand access to a really wide variety

00:28:02.240 of porn starting at a really early age before you've experienced the real thing how does that change the

00:28:07.700 way you approach sexual relationships and how has it been changing sexual relationships based on your

00:28:12.920 conversations so there's yeah based on my conversations i heard from a lot of so it was interesting

00:28:20.040 conversations with men tended to sort of say my porn life and my sex life are different things they're not

00:28:25.660 related which i thought was a good and interesting self-aware point and yet in my conversations with

00:28:31.200 women some other themes emerged which is you know i've been with a couple of people dated a couple of

00:28:37.720 people i have had sexual relationships with them and there were things that happened that i really wasn't

00:28:43.440 cool with and i later discovered as a sort of not heavy porn user that the things that happen to me

00:28:49.440 are sort of really common and in a lot of porn mainstream and otherwise so the maybe most common

00:28:56.940 example of this is choking a lot of younger women said that they'd had people try choking them

00:29:02.260 without asking and sort of unexpectedly and found this really traumatic and choking has become you know

00:29:08.760 really common in porn and some people do enjoy it in real life but it's really really really not

00:29:13.840 something you should spring on somebody and i think that if you know you're a young woman and you're

00:29:18.100 sexually inexperienced and you're with a young man and he's sexually experienced and he thinks that

00:29:21.400 that's like a normal and expected thing to do like that's gonna possibly scare both of you off

00:29:27.440 right so this is what you do okay i saw this yeah exactly okay yeah well okay well let's talk about

00:29:35.420 another factor that you explored in the article is this rise of anxiety and depression amongst young

00:29:40.600 people is that inhibiting people from having relationships or is the lack of relationships

00:29:45.880 making people more depressed oh such a good question and i really think that is this is sort of a vicious

00:29:51.820 circle or vicious cycle so we do know that depression and anxiety both of which seem to be

00:29:58.440 by some measures really rising among young people are for for almost everybody libido killers we also know

00:30:07.680 that the drugs used to treat those conditions are libido killers which is really sort of a cruel irony

00:30:14.500 we also know that having a happy healthy sex life seems to be a a booster of happiness and healthiness

00:30:23.640 you know having sex at least once a week is is tied to a whole bunch of really you know positive

00:30:28.960 outcomes in terms of well-being so you know it there is a bit of a chicken in the egg problem here as you say

00:30:35.340 and it's and it's also going back to this idea it's not just about sex but it's like relationships just

00:30:39.780 like human relationships young people's having a problem with this yeah well i i think perhaps you know

00:30:48.420 in the data suggested some older people are having a problem as well but you know it can become i mean

00:30:53.900 going back to the question of you know is it a good thing or a bad thing that teens aren't doing this

00:30:57.860 and you know yes maybe it's a good thing but then maybe some of the causes of it are a bad thing because i think

00:31:02.900 that you know once you get to a certain age in your 20s and you haven't had any experience with

00:31:07.480 flirtation rejection heartbreak all of those other things it can be a pretty overwhelming time to

00:31:14.620 sort of start to figure all of that out and i guess i you know i do think that the sort of

00:31:21.460 relationship experimentation part of this is really crucial like getting your heart broken when you're

00:31:27.960 in high school and there's a roof over your head and someone's going to make sure you eat dinner is a

00:31:32.480 little bit easier i think to hack than when you're 25 right when you're trying to graduate college or

00:31:36.960 get your first job yeah yeah and what's interesting you highlight throughout this book is this sort of

00:31:42.240 weird paradox that's going on not the book but the article um this paradox is going on is that this

00:31:47.060 you know young generation considers itself very progressive very open very tolerant yet at the same

00:31:53.620 time they they can these young people are also becoming increasingly prudish like we so there's like

00:31:59.280 this openness about sex there's all these apps and there's porn and all this stuff going on

00:32:02.900 but at the same time there's this lack of emotion but you know intimacy intimacy yeah yeah and i think

00:32:09.240 prudishness is prudishness is not the wrong word perhaps to some extent i mean i think look there's a

00:32:16.080 lot of research suggesting that heavy social media use is is tied to sort of poor self-image and

00:32:21.460 predicts poor body image and all the rest of that and this sort of coincides with this sort of

00:32:27.100 generational thing a lot of people have noticed when people started mentioning this to me as i was

00:32:31.080 embarking on this project i kind of didn't take it that seriously but it kept coming up which is that

00:32:35.820 people sort of pointed out that young people in gyms don't want to be naked in front of other people as

00:32:40.580 much as they did in the past and i was like really like i work out at home i don't go to a gym i don't

00:32:44.360 know if this is true but it kept coming up and you know i think that people you know some of that may be

00:32:49.660 sort of not wanting to have your photograph taken like that might be like a smartphone thing but some of it

00:32:53.920 i think actually is sort of increased sort of discomfort with nudity which is really interesting

00:32:59.720 and kind of counterintuitive because as you say there's you know all this the culture has never

00:33:04.940 been sort of more permissive or or or really super hyper sexualized in one way yeah i thought that was

00:33:10.800 interesting because i mean you hear people talk about that on social media it's like oh the old guy

00:33:14.740 at the gym just got naked and exactly exactly yeah there were that i i heard from a few people

00:33:21.920 like old guys old guys at the gym you know have no problem letting it all hang out and and maybe

00:33:27.560 there's something to that i mean look you know before the 90s i went to high school in the mid 90s and

00:33:32.620 up until about that point shortly before i was in high school most people you know had to shower after

00:33:38.100 gym class and then that changed for a variety of reasons involving liability and concern about

00:33:43.620 molestation and a whole bunch of other stuff and so now people actually just have less you know

00:33:48.120 experience being naked and and you know uh unembarrassed in front of other people like maybe

00:33:53.380 that's maybe that's part of this and i also think there's a sort of interesting question sort of

00:33:57.260 that dovetails off of what you just said about whether you know does something become less

00:34:02.300 interesting or alluring when it's no longer forbidden you know like if we if you can sort of download or

00:34:07.940 access you know any kind of you know you know sexual content you want does it kind of does it

00:34:14.480 does it lose does the real thing lose some of its allure i can't speak to that but it's an

00:34:18.420 interesting question yeah i mean it seems like you know we all the sex but we seem like it lives

00:34:22.220 we live like in a really unsexy time even though there's sex all around us yeah exactly right

00:34:27.420 like you watch those old movies from like the 40s and 50s and there's all this like tension

00:34:32.580 and like pretense and they don't actually say but it's like innuendo and it's like that's it's kind

00:34:37.740 of that's lights a fire to get sex but now it's just like meh it's all right exactly right and people

00:34:43.960 are people are sexting i mean which is is a bit of a puzzle right like how can it be that like people

00:34:48.460 people are so prudish but i guess you have a lot of control over that image of yourself right

00:34:52.120 you know if you're if you're taking a picture of yourself that's flattering and that you're comfortable

00:34:56.480 if you're doing it on your own terms that's one thing but in reality like sex with another person

00:35:01.160 even another person you know well is like you know is messy and potentially awkward you know it's

00:35:09.340 it's it's sort of the opposite of you know a controlled environment yeah that's another thing

00:35:14.940 i'm kind of this larger trend i think young people they i feel like they want more control

00:35:18.800 like and they're they're afraid of the awkwardness of relationships not just sex but like romantic

00:35:24.840 relations or even friendships because it's so you don't have any control over it right and it's

00:35:29.580 awkward and like all these apps and all these things that we've social media it allows you to

00:35:34.340 control but when you get that control like you lose something in the process i think that is such a key

00:35:40.720 point i mean that that honestly is one of the things that came up when i tried to sort of you know push

00:35:46.160 people on so you're you're texting with guys on apps but then you're not meeting up with them in real

00:35:51.600 life and i did hear variations of like well that you know texting with somebody is controlled right

00:35:57.160 like i have time to think about how to respond i'm not put on the spot that word awkwardness kept

00:36:02.260 coming up again and again it's less awkward another word that came up several times was ambiguity there's

00:36:07.540 less ambiguity so even though i may not like apps very well i like the fact that by opting into them

00:36:13.620 we both know that we're sort of potentially interested in each other there's none of that sort of

00:36:18.100 confusion that there was say when i met my husband i mean when i first when i think i may say this

00:36:22.760 in the piece but when i sort of first met up with him for drinks outside the office actually he'd

00:36:26.600 stopped working in the in the in the building at that point where i met him on the elevator

00:36:31.640 but it was like are we is this a date is this not a date i don't know and a lot of people just sort

00:36:36.120 of said they found that type of you know uncertainty so stressful you know that it just they couldn't

00:36:42.240 handle it almost but isn't that what makes like romantic relationships exciting like the tension

00:36:46.320 exactly it's like the roller coaster of it right the up the down does she like me does she not like me

00:36:51.960 yeah like that's all the jane austen novels are about is does he like me what are his feelings for

00:36:57.380 me like i don't know right yeah exactly it's it's it can be exhilarating i mean it can also be you

00:37:02.780 know uh queasiness inducing right but go together yeah they go together i mean so we've been talking

00:37:08.460 about the personal effects of this i mean it can lead to depression people are feeling more lonely

00:37:13.280 etc but what are some of the social and even political implications of this sex recession yeah so this

00:37:20.140 you know when i started working on the piece i thought that this would be more what i spent more

00:37:24.560 of my time on sort of looking at whether this is tied to the decreasing fertility rate in this country

00:37:29.980 over the past 10 years the the birth rate has gone down quite sharply it hit a historic low for the

00:37:35.240 second time in a second year in a row recently um having been above you know above two children per

00:37:42.320 women as recently as just before the great recession and you know clearly this is somewhat connected to that

00:37:48.620 you know sex and babies aren't the same thing but they obviously have something to do with each

00:37:52.940 other so that that's sort of one question i tend to think you know perhaps some of the things that

00:37:58.560 may be making dating more complicated for people in their 20s that we've talked about feeling not ready

00:38:03.460 to start to you know not financially sort of steady enough to to be pursuing kind of long-term

00:38:09.760 partnership and family and part of this another part of this of course you know which really became a

00:38:16.160 national issue after i started working on the piece is sort of what are the political consequences

00:38:21.360 of people feeling like they can't find a partner like is there something about that that's sort of

00:38:26.640 destabilizing and of course you know there have been all of these really awful shootings you know where

00:38:32.860 so-called self-described incels say that their inability to to get a woman has you know fueled rage and

00:38:39.920 even violence and you know this isn't to say that that their grievances are legitimate they're not

00:38:46.480 but it is interesting that you know we can look for examples around the world and through history

00:38:51.800 like when there are lots of untouched young people that tends to be socially destabilizing

00:38:56.500 i mean the other concern with a lot of countries too particularly western democracies that have robust

00:39:03.060 welfare states is that the welfare state depends upon people having babies right right right right right i mean

00:39:09.340 some i i wouldn't say this but some people sort of say you know yeah social security all these things

00:39:13.220 are sort of a ponzi scheme you have to have more people paying into them for them to pay out eventually

00:39:16.780 or to keep paying out and so yeah the the sort of fiscal implications of this certainly are are real

00:39:22.500 you know i'm more worried though about sort of what this tells us in the here and now about the people

00:39:27.520 who are here already you know it seems to me that if there's some set of conditions that are making

00:39:32.060 human connection and intimacy in the here and now among people who are already here more fraught and more

00:39:37.880 elusive that should that should be concerning to everybody so it seems like a lot of people

00:39:43.420 based on the article here are unhappy with the state of the you know the dating scene or the

00:39:49.000 relationship scene um but they like the same patterns keep perpetuating like and it seems like

00:39:55.100 you know people keep acting in a way that's contrary to the actual desires like what do you think is going

00:40:00.120 on there what are the obstacles that stand in the way of people you know doing something different

00:40:04.140 that's not you know the different thing that's not working yeah well i mean i think you know going

00:40:09.480 back to the anxiety you know the more you become unaccustomed to doing something the more nerve

00:40:14.600 wracking it is one woman i talked to who i call anna in the piece talked about how you know she kept

00:40:21.880 using the apps even though they weren't really working that wonderfully for her because the more

00:40:25.780 she did it the harder it was to talk to people in real life so i think part of the answer to this

00:40:30.900 is to just sort of if you are unhappy you know twofold realize that you are not alone

00:40:35.760 i think that's key i think that feeling that you're alone or weird is really sort of self-fulfilling

00:40:41.040 and and clearly a lot of people are struggling with the ways in which the world has changed very

00:40:45.860 quickly in a very short period of time so to sort of take some comfort in that know that other people

00:40:50.780 aren't happy with this either and you know if instagram is making you feel bad get off of it

00:40:55.740 go exercise sleep take care of yourself and you know make take take the hour and a half a day that

00:41:01.760 you're spending on tinder you know to go out and and do something that that makes you happy and perhaps

00:41:08.140 that will also you know connect you with other people yeah typically is the best dating advice

00:41:12.720 do something you find you enjoy because you'll usually end up doing that with someone that also

00:41:17.000 enjoys that thing and that can be the kickstarter of a relationship exactly well this is the kind of

00:41:21.800 article it's super fascinating and i feel like there's a lot more that can be said about it is this

00:41:25.140 something that you can see turning into a book in the future i've been thinking about that yeah i mean

00:41:30.260 you know i i'm not sure i wouldn't want to just sort of dilate what's already here i'd want to do

00:41:36.260 something that that sort of was original but i think there is just clearly a lot of people are eager to

00:41:41.940 read about this topic and i'm i find it fascinating so with any luck i will i will find a way to sort of

00:41:48.080 continue in this vein okay is there some place people can go to learn more about the article and your work

00:41:53.260 yeah so you can find me on twitter my handle is at kate julian k-a-t-e-j-u-l-i-a-n and the article

00:42:00.200 is on the atlantic's website and it's called the sex recession it has well kate julian thanks so much

00:42:05.100 for coming on this has been a great conversation thank you so much for having me my guest today

00:42:09.280 was kate julian she is a senior editor at the atlantic and she's the author of the piece the sex

00:42:13.820 recession you can find that on the atlantic.com also check out our show notes at aom.is

00:42:18.640 slash sex recession where you can find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic

00:42:22.840 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:42:39.120 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com and if you enjoy the show

00:42:42.960 you've gotten something out of it i'd appreciate if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher that

00:42:46.320 helps out a lot as always thank you for your continued support and until next time this is

00:42:49.980 brett mckay telling you to stay and lean

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#464： What's Causing the Sex Recession？

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