Color me surprised. Not.

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:

• You can finally have (virtual) sex with ANYONE you know. (2018
• Software polarizes everything. Even sex (2019)
• A COVID effect we won’t fully see for years (2021
• Nudification is for women NEAR you (2021)

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.