Software polarizes everything. Even sex
It would explain lots of things,wouldn’t it?
Young people make LESS sex today
- Teenagers (in the US and UK?) are better behaved and less hedonistic nowadays
- [Italian] millennials “make less sex than their peers in the same age bracket of twenty years ago”
- No sex, please, we are millennials
NO, they make MORE sex. And more extreme too
(sometimes just online, or often STARTING from there)
- “New Generation” Norwegian Boys “Don’t Dare to Go Out Without Viagra”
- Enough with “Porn Conditioned Boys” in Portland
More or less sex? Both, probably
My bookmarks contain many more entries of both types above. Plus entries that prove that BOTH views are crap, of course. Where, and what is the truth? My guess is that the truth is in both extremes.
No certainties here, just an hypothesis on which your feedback is very welcome!
We do know for sure, at this point, that software and other digital technologies (meaning smartphones, social networks, and everything in between) highly polarize both politics and the job market.
My unscientific guess is that those digital technologies are doing exactly the same thing in the sexual sphere. In any age there have been people practicing wild, unrestrained “free sex” as wells as others practicing total abstinence. Once upon a time, maybe those two groups were (relatively) small extremes, with a large, heterogeneous “middle” in between. Maybe sexual activity went from one extreme to another much more gradually. Today, instead, software has destroyed the “middle”, pushing the majority of young people at one of the two extremes. What do you think?
Sex education?
Sure. Just don’t expect too much of it, if done always in the same ways:
- Still too few use condoms
- Compulsory sex education won’t reduce rates of teenage pregnancy
Who writes this, why, and how to help
I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
I do it because YOUR civil rights and the quality of YOUR life depend every year more on how software is used AROUND you.
To this end, I have already shared more than a million words on this blog, without any paywall or user tracking, and am sharing the next million through a newsletter, also without any paywall.
The more direct support I get, the more I can continue to inform for free parents, teachers, decision makers, and everybody else who should know more stuff like this. You can support me with paid subscriptions to my newsletter, donations via PayPal (mfioretti@nexaima.net) or LiberaPay, or in any of the other ways listed here.THANKS for your support!