Casual sex was dying out before the pandemic

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In Canada, anyways, apparently:

https://www.healthing.ca/wellness/sex/c ... e-pandemic

Several things come to mind:

1. Are gamers not getting laid because they're spending time gaming? Or are they spending time gaming because they're not getting laid? Chicken/egg, correlation != causation.

2. Duh alcohol facilitates sex. Liquid courage for boys, lowers inhibitions for girls. Duh.

3. Hmm, why would people drink less? Fewer house parties hosted by young adults when they can't afford a home of their own. People stay living with their parents because jobs pay peanuts and homes cost Millions. Not exactly the same party vibe to say "come party with me and my parents," in most cases. Also, if they are living on their own and paying their bills, alcohol is a very expensive luxury that many cannot afford barely at all.. so if they're paying Most of their money in rent, the rest on transportation, and buying Ramen noodles on a credit card.. maybe they're opting not to spend $50 on a 24 pack of "cheap," beer?

4. Marijuana has probably become more socially acceptable clear across the country since it was legalized. Everyone's getting stoned and playing video games waiting for to inherit enough money from their grandparents to move out of their parents' houses.

This raises more questions than it answers.

I think it a shame they made such a strong correlation with alcohol consumption. I would prefer not to think you need alcohol to enjoy sex.

It also seems they equate "sex" with "sexual intercourse". I wonder if the numbers change any when other forms of sexual activity are taken into account?

It would also help to break the numbers down by type of casual sex.

Sex engaged in by couples who have paired primarily for the sake of having an available sex partner.

Sex engaged in by people who are in relationships but may have some "old friends" they occasionally hook up with on the side.

Sex that happens primarily because one or both partners had consumed an excessive amount of alcohol.

Sex engaged in by people who actively pursue hook-ups especially with total strangers they expect never to see again.

In my personal experience, "casual" sex by which I would mean sex between 2 people who haven't expressed feelings for each other, happened because the female partner was randy and not timid about proposing sex. However in those cases I continued to "date" the person in question for some time after. Even the first time my wife and I did it, I believe a large motivation for her was that she hadn't had any for a while. I don't think she was actually "in love" with me yet, although it was mutually understood we would be an established couple going forward.

One explanation for millennials might be that, unlike people my age, they had enough casual encounters in high school that by the time they reached the age covered by this study, they were more particular. My son, who is now married to a woman he met when both were 20, had a lot of "casual" experiences in high school and by the time he was 20 he was probably more interested in something serious. Apart from my son and some of his friends, I have no real idea what goes on in high school these days or in the 2000s when my son was there.

Having said this, I can still say that in the 70s when I first became sexually active, there seemed to be a lower threshold for young women to have a sexual encounter when they happened to be in the mood and had just met a guy they fancied. It wasn't unusual for two college-age people to meet on a train and decide, after some conversation, to have sex when they got off. To state it simply, if a young woman met a guy she was attracted to, she didn't hesitate to have sex with him. A situation like this would have none of the cynicism one might associate with hooking up, more like "he's hot so I want to do him, why shouldn't I?". OTOH there was much less knowledge about sex then. It wasn't that unusual for a young woman to have never experienced orgasm because they didn't know how. My first girlfriend seemed to assume that orgasm is something that would eventually happen when you had intercourse, which in her case it did not. I mention her mostly though because I wanted to mention that, the one time I saw her after we were not longer a couple, she bragged to me that she had taken up the hobby of going to bars and picking guys up for sex. The reason I mention this is to emphasize how utterly unashamed she was of this activity. Whereas nowadays there seems to be a lot more shame attached to women having any sort of "casual" sex than there was back then, something I wish I better understood.

Last edited by MaxE on 04 Apr 2021, 12:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Clearly no on surveyed the gay community..

Solution to all of those heterosexual problems pointed out by MaxE above = don't involve women. Problems solved!

This article seemed to be entirely about heterosexuals so I addressed it as such. If you had to also consider gay sex there'd be no chance for a consistent observation.

Why not? Casual gay sex isn't consistent or doesn't follow a trend?

Even though I had considerable “casual sex” in my 20s, I find that sex really shouldn’t be “casual,” gay or straight.

It felt cheap to me after my casual sex experiences. It wasn’t the girls’ fault.....it just was.

Well, you could have left a higher tip if you needed it to feel expensive..

I don't know enough to comment. This article seemed to be about heterosexuals so I limited my remarks to that topic. I would have no idea how to bring gays into the picture as I have no experience on which to draw.

Same here, it just seems to feel disappointing and hollow somehow. Not fussed if other people prefer to do it that way but it's definitely not for me.

Only read the article and not the research but I wonder if they looked at if the drop in casual sex was by choice or not. Like goldfish21 said, are more people thinking "I may as well play games because I can't get casual sex" or "I don't want casual sex because there's other things I'd rather be doing"?

I know the tropes of how prolific "hook-up culture" supposedly is make it sound like kids are still party hounds looking for booze and sex - but perhaps the reduction in alcohol consumption and sexual activity aren't cause and effect, but are both effects of a root cause, such as not actually being as much of a party generation as they've been made out to be. The uptick in video game consumption could have risen by that amount anyways, with no correlation to reduced alcohol consumption or sexual activity whatsoever. Know what else happened between 2007 and 2017? World of Warcraft mainstream popularized the MMO, and eSports started becoming a thing.

Additionally, then perhaps the casual-hook-up-ers that drink 5.5 times as much, are simply the remaining party goers that haven't given up partying yet.

..is it possible that video game creators have finally actually made some sort of simulated reality video game(s) that are actually better than sex??

I’ll never personally know. I almost never play video games ever and am quite a fan of casual sex.

Ironically I'm pretty sure grade 11 was around when I stopped playing video games because I had discovered the latter.
Best decision ever.

I think casual sex would just take away or completely dampen the purity of the experience and intimacy of expressing my love physically for a true love, if I ever do find one...never did understand this casual sex thing, must just be a social thing I cannot comprehend

Pinball didn't stop me from having sex

We only had pinball until I was maybe 16-17 years old. No video game, even in arcades.

We have a pinball machine at home. I think I've played it a couple times in the last 8 years. Pinball doesn't distract me from sex, either.

Table football is more fun than pinball

Casual sex was never my cup of tea so I can't say much about the OP.