Uhh, I’m not sure you’re familiar with what sex is, if that’s your definition. After all, your description includes soaking, and those Mormon teens assured me that neither god nor the government would mind.

I won't disagree that loneliness is an issue in our society. But I don't think it is the only "problem". Anecdotally for me: I wasn't ready to have sex, a relationship or for dating for a long time. So I'm mostly happy to have taken that time. In previous generations you'd marry and have kids for a while at that point. I think we have a lot more room to grow individually today.

I mean, from your own link, those error bars come from:

The data being a clustered sample set,

That study wasn't specifically asking whether or not respondents were virgins, ie, had 0 sex partners.

...

The error bars there are large because the actual question was 'how many sex partners have you had in the past however many years?', and then your linked post explains how this particular dataset/survey/study was then presented to try to show the answer to a question that wasn't explicitly asked.

That can have a lot more variance than a survey/study that flatly asks binary question of 'have you ever had sex before?', and then goes on to define what does and doesn't count as 'having sex'.

...

And indeed when you actually do that kind of approach, there are many other graphs from many other studies showing it being increasingly for both young men and young women to be virgins, have had 0 sex partners.

https://news.iu.edu/live/news/26924-nearly-1-in-3-young-men-in-the-us-report-having-no

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/young-adult-sexlessness-skyrocketed-in-the-last-decade-while-male-virginity-doubled-study/ar-AA1z4kMy

https://www.cdc.gov/yrbs/dstr/index.html

All of these show a marked decline in the number of both young men and young women who have ever had sex, that more people remain sexless for longer, to an older age.

(Though this started earlier among men and is more pronounced, women are now catching up as well)

...

Also worth noting:

Compared to adult participants in the 2009 survey, adults in the 2018 group were significantly more likely to report no penile-vaginal intercourse in the prior year, the researchers found. Study participants were also significantly less likely to report engaging in any other sexual behaviors examined in the study, such as oral sex or anal sex. All modes of past-year partnered sex were reported by fewer people in the 2018 cohort.

Yeah, contrary to the implication of OP's image... no, young men are not having more of some other kind of sex than male/female p/v, but still having some other kind of sex.

They're just not having sex with a partner. At all.

Bros are not en masse becoming gay or bi or pan or trans, and then having 'non-traditional' sex that would make them not virgins in a 'non-traditional' way, not in the numbers you'd need to make that a statistically viable explanation for lack of m/f p/v sex.

This is funny haha meme joke, but its not based in reality, its based in whimsy.

You can check that against male self-id rates as LGBTQ and see that there has been a slow, gradual rise, from about 3% up to about 5% for men right now... but nothing like an 8% to 28% rise in roughly the same time period.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/719697/american-adults-who-identify-as-homosexual-bisexual-or-transgender-by-gender/

This one particular graph having error bars does not mean this is not a real thing that is happening.

...

And in case its relevant, I am a queer guy who has had varying kinds of sex and intimacy with both men and women, trans-inclusive.

Honestly I trust a plot with huge error bars much more than a plot with tiny error bars or constant error bars.

It might be 5%, it might be 16%. Those are basically the same number, moving along

So, at age 18, my virginity comes back if I lost it sooner? I lost my virginity twice? Neat!

(ignoring trouble with the word virginity and what the definition of even a sexual partner or something would be when the average reader perhaps thinks PiV penetrative sex).

Edit: as usual, I should have scrolled down first as others beat me to it.

Didn't you know? When you turn 18 your body hits the virginity reset button!

I'm guessing thats to avoid some ethical grey areas. Or theyre specifically gathering data on men after highschool.

I assume they don't want to open a can of worms regarding childhood abuse. Doesn't seem needless

Aren't they turning the gays to incels?

People weren't gay until 1989 so that makes sense. Literally not a single one. 😏

Sure, but like... maybe that data isn't really relevant or trustworthy either if that's how it was phrased?

Pollster: "Have you ever had sex with a woman?"

Closeted sexually active 28 year old gay guy when being gay could get you ostracized or killed: "Oh.... y... yeah! I love the vaginas. So... slippery and... moist (gag)"

Pollster: "NICE!" high five

It think that rather than early - really early - exposure to porn turning everyone into sex-fiends, it's actually terrifying a lot of them. What if I don't want to gargle cum like Adriana Chechik? What if I don't have a 10 inch cock to stuff my stepmother with?

A more optimistic reading might be that masturbating is easier, freer, quicker, and more accepted than ever before. Rather than risk an STI, pregnancy or human relationship, just crank one out and get back to work.

Sex is such a basic human need I can't imagine what going without is doing to mental health.

In some cultures (mostly thinking if predominantly Muslim ones, but there are probably others) having sex in your youth isn't expected or even accepted, so really not having sex alone is fine. It's the whole Western idea of sex = self-worth that really fucks people up.

But it was also something people lied a lot about so the numbers could be shaky. Maybe we should redo it and ask old people when they got laid the first time.

it seemed like we were all fucking, even the nerds

Checking in as a nerd who went to high school in the 00's. Yes, we were still fucking then. Especially the marching band nerds. Don't get me started on what people got up to on our long bus trips...

There are more bi guys than society recognizes though.

Ackshually, AFAIK around 5% of the population are homosexual. If that is completely ignored in the graph, the actual number would be closer to 22%. It could possibly be even lower if you consider bisexuals who just not had sex with women. And if you consider that homosexuality is much more accepted these days the numbers are skewed and the percentage could be even higher among younger people.

Aren't there? Seems like it would make at least a dent in the graph.

5% of men of all ages groups are willing to admit, they're attracted to other men. 6.2% say they've had sexual contact with other men.

For context: 23.1% of Gen Z adults self identify as LGBTQ+.

It’s not obviously internet porn

It's social networks and the loss of 3rd (and 1st) places. Everybody knows what the problem is. Everybody has some idea how to fix it (look how to fix car transit). Every person in power is intent on refusing to improve things in any way and making it worse.