Not much sex in the city? Of course

(Paywall-free popularization like this is what I do for a living. To support me, see the end of this post)

Color me surprised. Not.

Not much sex in the city? Of course /img/sex-not.jpg

Just like that, nobody’s having sex any more,writes A. Mahdawi, nothing that “one hypothesis can be worrying”.

These are the main facts:

  • Over the past decade a number of studies have found a significant decline in sexual activity around the world… among people 14-49 years old
  • Some of the reasons are easy to guess, e.g. increased use of social media and video games, together with a decrease in alcohol use

But…

Then comes the worrying hypothesis

“The mainstreaming of extremely rough sex could be putting a generation of young people off sex altogether."

“What’s problematic is when young people learn about sex through porn and think that violence is a normal part of intimacy."

I think there can be no doubt that, even ignoring completely religion, ethics, morals.. the mainstreaming of porn and extremely rough sex does “put off sex altogether” some young people. Possibly a lot of young people. It would be impossible that this were not the case.

This is surely a serious problem and, surely, one that is made bigger, possibly much bigger than it could be also because of “a lack of proper sex education”.

Now, what exactly “proper education” means, and who, where, when… should provide it is a can of worm I am not going to open here.

But… allow me to be absolutely unsurprised from the idea that “mainstreaming of porn and extremely rough sex DOES put young people off sex altogether”.

Hypothesis? This was BOUND to happen

All the studies mentioned by A. Mahdawi do is to quantify a bit something absolutely obvious and bound to happen, not a “hypothesis”. If you have any doubt about this, start reading these posts from me, and then all the links they contain:

Unavoidable final request

You are NOT going to see here any proposal or demand to censor online porn, or sexual content in general. This is just a request to think seriously about sexual education, starting with the forms that may be both the simplest and the hardest: discuss this stuff, sharing advice and support, at least with your parents, children, students, teachers, friends, relatives… Don’t give anything for granted.

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!

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