People are stretched as thin as can be and stressed beyond belief. Then during their free time they are inundated by algorithms that are made to keep them scrolling and to feel as many negative emotions as possible. Then their food is full of hormones and their food wrappers and cosmetics and toiletries are all full of phthalates and microplastics and undisclosed hormone disrupting chemicals. All in a progressively protestant society that increasingly isolates us from one another and shames us for our natural urges and feelings and bodies, all in the name of selling us unnatural solutions for these "problems."

It's a mystery though.

Should I invest in sex now that it's low?

Women are avoiding men. For all sorts of reasons that I think most of you are aware of. It's a huge turn off to be with someone who thing you are lower than them. Who thinks you don't deserve basic human rights.

It's a huge mood killer.

Women also are feeling like they have the ability to refuse when before they didn't.

Women are also scared of pregnancy in a way they haven't been since the fecking 1900s.

Because now, you get pregnant. A doctor will let you die before they will provide medical care if that medical care has any chance of harming a fetus. Even if the fetus is dead.

Women are dying from pregnancy. Women are no longer able to terminate an early pregnancy safely.

Women are scared.

*I realize not every sex encounter is a man and woman. But most of the population is hetero.

Many animals breed less in captivity. Many do not breed at all. The less people feel a sense of control over their own lives, the weaker the desire to procreate becomes. Even if people use birth control, sex drive is still ultimately a reproductive urge. If you're a farmer in the 19th century ? You have a great deal of freedom and independence. Mid 20th century American worker? Homes are cheap. Jobs are abundant. Labor rights are strong. You have lots of options on how to earn a living. You have a clear path to getting a home and raising a family on your own terms. Present-day 20 something? You don't just have roommates in an apartment; you're actually sharing bedrooms. Or you're stuck living under your parents' roof forever, your only hope of home ownership being them passing it on to you. All the jobs available to you don't come close to providing any kind of independent living, let alone the wages to actually buy a home, start a family, etc. You're just going to have to run on the wage slave treadmill til you die.

The economy has developed to squeeze ever more out of workers and consumers. We're psychologically manipulated at every turn. Every business feels like a scam trying to pull one over on you. You can't even sign up for a gym membership without risking getting caught in dark business practices (their infamous cancellation policies.) People feel and are trapped in a system that they have little to no control over. Politicians only listen to the wealthy. Unions provided some voice to the voiceless for some time, but those have been gutted. People feel like cornered animals. They feel as though the entire system is just on elaborate exercise in thinly veiled slavery meant to extract every last once of the work product of your entire life from you. The wealthy pay you a pittance for your labor and then take all that pittance back in usurious rents. People feel trapped.

Lots of animals refuse to reproduce in captivity. Lots of animals reduce their birth rates under captivity. Why should humans be any different? Why should we be any different than the mice of Universe 25?

No idea. I can just say that at least for me it wasn't voluntary. 17 through 21 tried dating some people, only one agreed and then made fun of me publically and sent me photos of fucking other dudes. Since then I got depressed really hard and gained a lot of weight and lost a lot of hair, still trying my best to recover and lose weight. I somehow missed that one girl in college that gave me signs that she likes me, and it made me even more depressed, thinking that I lost my only hope. Idk why I wrote this, sorry if you read it, just had something stuck in my throat and needed to type it out.

Humans have discovered we’re in captivity, and so we’ve stopped breeding.

I imagine it's a continuation of the isolation that social media causes.

edit: looked into this a little more and found This medium article. saying there wasn't much change in the rate of sex weekly for adults in the 90s, and not until the early 2000s when OECD countries started seeing a reduction.

Not sure what to trust but Family Studies is a conservative think-tank so I don't necessarily trust their data either.

Lack of genuine idle time breeds ... non-breeding.

1. People are more willing to be honest now.
2. How much of that sex in the past had the same amount of consent?

Digital drugs AI, social media. People replaced sex with mobile phone dopamine hits. Misogyny and misandry in media. Lack of financial stability.

Notice it goes down over periods of time for which the political party in power is against women having bodily autonomy or rights?

And goes up when leftist policies such as expanding access to healthcare are introduced.

I have a really high sex drive and I've never been in a relationship where I consistently got it often enough to be satisfied so I stopped trying. It also doesn't help that my living situation is not conducive to bringing people home with me.

It’s because of mitochondrial challenges.

1. My first question about studies like this is always "how do they know this?". And I while I know I could find the study and dig into the setsils, I don't have to do that to know that this is the result of surveys taken over this time period. Unless technology develops to grant us a way to monitor and track the sex lives of people objectively and unobtrusively, that's just the best way can do. So any conclusions drawn really should be "the decline in people's surveyed frequency of sexual intercourse has gone down over time". Just to throw out some baseless speculation: could people in the past inflated their answers to appear "cool" or similar? Could there be cultural shifts pressuring respondents to deflate their numbers now? Personally, I'm inclined to believe the results of the study ARE true, but I'm not confident in that.

2. The decline of 3rd spaces, which is a big concept with multiple causes. Car-centric infrastructure, industrialization, women moving to the workforce, capitalism, technology, etc. It has become harder for people to have intimate personal interactions with others who live nearby. I believe the rise of things like social media, dating apps, and now AI companions is less about "hey we developed this new technology to replace and maybe be better than real human interaction" and more about "we need to develop something to replace what we have lost".

3. Consent. Reductions in arranged marriages and child marriages. Protections and rights for women and children.

4. Economics. Everyone is overworked and tired. I've seen this in a lot of the other comments here but I actually don't buy into this quite as much. There seems to be an inverse relationship between GDP per capita and birth rate, at least recently. Most of Europe, Japan, Australia, the US, Canada, Korea, and perhaps most notably... China. All have experienced declines in birthrates, and in a lot these cases there is good modern data showing the birth rates changing as these economies develop. The countries having the most children are poorer countries.

Now, it could be that these wealthier countries have access to birth control, so this does not necessarily dissolve economics as a factor. But, my own theory is that sex is one of the cheapest forms of entertainment available to humanity (if you don't factor in the costs of children). So the citizens of these wealthier countries are spending their time and money doing other things. Not just skii vacations or going yachting, but reading books and watching TV.

Poverty, depression, gooning to porn.. Must I go on?

I blame Newt Gingrich

https://www.healthline.com/health/erectile-dysfunction/antidepressant-sexual-side-effects#side-effects-in-women

The best answer is how anti depressants which at least 20% of those in the USA take ---- depresses the sex drive for both males and females.

Spousal Rape Laws started getting enforced finally.

Besides plenty of other reasons people mentioned, Gen Z in particular is pretty antisocial. I've seen them hang out at bars, they might get one drink and just stare at their phone. Just anecdotal, but from what I've gathered it definitely feels like those type of folk either don't know how to have fun or are averse to it. I don't mean that in a completely negative way, either. I think covid really made a lot of people in general more socially inept. Again, I don't mean that to denegrate and I've definitely felt that a bit myself.

Microplastics in brains have hit critical mass

Oh damn, this won't be good for the stick market

Sex in an unaffordable luxury and a deadly liability, I'm surprised it is still that high, I imagine those are people who didn't stop to think about the wild and unnecessary risk they're taking and how they'll regret it functionally forever.

Not enough foreskin in America