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.
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.
Going to point out that you’ve erroneously used the term, over and over again, “sex partners”, when the graph states “sex with women” and so does the question they seemingly asked.
I am being somewhat loose with terms because I am talking about a whole bunch of statistical data broadly, more specifically, the GSS survey data from the comment I am replying to, and also the other 3 studies that can be found either at or by following through the other links I’ve provided.
But uh sure, in terms of the GSS study, what is being looked at is currently more precisely defined as’female sex partners,’ more specifically, since you’ve become 18 yo.
So uh anyway, I thought that was fairly clearly obvious if you’d actually read even the first few paragraphs of the link in the comment I am replying to, that explains the methodology used to generate that graph.
I was trying to just summarize it for those less well versed in statistics.
…
Either way, my main critique is still valid.
The comment I am replying to seems to imply that because of the error bars on this particular way of presenting GSS data, that the whole idea of more and more males having less and less sex is somehow not credible…
… and this is not the case, there are many, many other studies, far more than just the 3 I’ve linked, that show that just broadly, young people are having less and less sex.
…
If you can actually find the actual, precise phrasing of what the GSS survey asked in 2018, heck I’d appreciate it, but uh yeah, it does seem to be the case that the GSS survey in 2018 does not expliclity and directly ask whether or not a respondent has had sex with how many people in the last whatever time period…
The whole problem here is that the questionairre itself is changing over time, and thus the methods of calculating whatever graph out of reverse engineering these changing questions is frought with complexity and error.
This is the same dataset, the GSS, being again teased in similar ways, with 2024 data.
Apparently we are now up to roughly 27% of 18-29 yo men and 20% of 18-29 yo women having had no sex in the past year, and apparently, the actual wording of the question in the 2024 survey was:
'About how often did you have sex during the last 12 months?’.
So that would be all inclusive, but also:
In 2012, PARTNERS was used (a variable excluded from the most recent survey), as SEXFREQ was only asked to people who had had one or more sexual partners on this year.
…
This is the kind of shit that makes using this GSS survey to look at this issue less statistically valid… you’re not actually looking at the same answer to the same question, calculated 8n the same way, over the whole time period that is displayed in these meme graphs.
This is what is meant by “lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Again, the whole point of my comment is that yes, the original graph here is a dumb graph because of how it in particular is constructed, but that it is also dumb to then conclude this whole concept of young people having less sex is bullshit.
There are other, better, more statstically valid studies, graphs and datasets that exist which do a better job of showing the trend/issue people are talking about, and do show that it is a real thing that is happening.
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:
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.
Going to point out that you’ve erroneously used the term, over and over again, “sex partners”, when the graph states “sex with women” and so does the question they seemingly asked.
I am being somewhat loose with terms because I am talking about a whole bunch of statistical data broadly, more specifically, the GSS survey data from the comment I am replying to, and also the other 3 studies that can be found either at or by following through the other links I’ve provided.
But uh sure, in terms of the GSS study, what is being looked at is currently more precisely defined as’female sex partners,’ more specifically, since you’ve become 18 yo.
https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/variables/5060/vshow
So uh anyway, I thought that was fairly clearly obvious if you’d actually read even the first few paragraphs of the link in the comment I am replying to, that explains the methodology used to generate that graph.
I was trying to just summarize it for those less well versed in statistics.
…
Either way, my main critique is still valid.
The comment I am replying to seems to imply that because of the error bars on this particular way of presenting GSS data, that the whole idea of more and more males having less and less sex is somehow not credible…
… and this is not the case, there are many, many other studies, far more than just the 3 I’ve linked, that show that just broadly, young people are having less and less sex.
…
If you can actually find the actual, precise phrasing of what the GSS survey asked in 2018, heck I’d appreciate it, but uh yeah, it does seem to be the case that the GSS survey in 2018 does not expliclity and directly ask whether or not a respondent has had sex with how many people in the last whatever time period…
The whole problem here is that the questionairre itself is changing over time, and thus the methods of calculating whatever graph out of reverse engineering these changing questions is frought with complexity and error.
…
https://nuancepill.substack.com/p/2024-update-to-the-gss-sexlessness-graph
This is the same dataset, the GSS, being again teased in similar ways, with 2024 data.
Apparently we are now up to roughly 27% of 18-29 yo men and 20% of 18-29 yo women having had no sex in the past year, and apparently, the actual wording of the question in the 2024 survey was:
So that would be all inclusive, but also:
…
This is the kind of shit that makes using this GSS survey to look at this issue less statistically valid… you’re not actually looking at the same answer to the same question, calculated 8n the same way, over the whole time period that is displayed in these meme graphs.
This is what is meant by “lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Again, the whole point of my comment is that yes, the original graph here is a dumb graph because of how it in particular is constructed, but that it is also dumb to then conclude this whole concept of young people having less sex is bullshit.
There are other, better, more statstically valid studies, graphs and datasets that exist which do a better job of showing the trend/issue people are talking about, and do show that it is a real thing that is happening.