[missingrib]

These numbers seem kind of low to me, even when I think of people in my life anecdotally. I wonder what is going on there.

[BurningFrog]

On average, the people you know are more socially successful than the people you don't know.

[missingrib]

I meant the opposite. It seems like even amongst the relatively normal group of people I know, the rate of sexlessness seems higher than these stats suggest.

[owl57]

Most people I know, it's because we studied math or wrote programs together. We were selected and got to know each other mostly for solving mathematical or coding problems. There's a stereotype that these skills correlate negatively with social ones — I'm not sure if it's the case, but at least the opposite isn't obvious.

[prvc]

Maybe so, but not necessarily true a priori.

[alephnerd]

The 18-24 cohort (unsurprisingly) had less sex. Being in high school and starting college will do that to you, especially during a pandemic that prevented students from moving out.

You can't have a kid out of high school and expect to raise them with a decent life anymore. This is a global trend btw, not just the US.

[fanzhang]

Mostly because the definition of decent life has shot upwards way faster than economic standards.

From fixed standards, the median kid being raised today is doing way better than 100 years ago, even though people chose to have way more kids 100 years ago: - Cars were death traps. - Dying in infancy and 20s, 30s was common. - Very few people went to college.

100 years ago, no one felt "indecent" to raise a kid they can't afford to send to college, or knew at a 1% chance of dying due to malnutrition. Now, for many people, they would feel indecent bringing someone into the world in that state.