I wonder how much of it is silent undiagnosed depression. Lack of desire for dating from such depression?
Life sucks, the future looks really bleak for the young, billionaire exploiters are taking over, etc, etc. What are their prospects, if they can’t become wealthy being their own boss as a social media influencer? Work a 9-5 till death to make a billionaire rich?
I dont know at all, just speculating if this could be part of it.
I think there’s a few factors at play here
Yes, depression is a big one
There’s also a lack of places to go and things to do for young people. Some parents are weird about their kids going anywhere these days, and no one really wants to bring their boyfriend/girlfriend over to hang out with their parents.
And even if you don’t have obnoxious helicopter parents, where do you go? Malls are dying, restaurants and movies are expensive, and if you go hang out in a park some Karen will call the police on you.
Neighborhoods aren’t walkable, public transit is broken, and cars are unaffordable so even if you find somewhere to go on a date, how do you get there?
And at least in heterosexual dating, we’ve also had a bit of a cultural shift that might throw things off. A lot of things that used to be accepted we now rightly understand are problematic, I think a lot of men and boys are hesitant to make the first move now because we don’t want to be seen as creeps, but at the same time I think most girls still kind of expect the guys to make the first move, and while a lot of us are a bit more enlightened and could be cool with that (my wife of 5 years made the first move, she’d probably still be waiting if she left it to me) there’s still plenty of guys with toxic fragile masculinity out there who could react poorly to a girl making the first move and I don’t blame girls for not wanting to take on that risk (for the record, I also choose the bear)
So the dynamics have shifted a bit, and I don’t think we’ve really figured out how things are supposed to work yet, and honestly things probably need to shift a whole hell of a lot more before things can normalize there and people can just feel comfortable asking other people out on dates without worrying about it being weird.
And in a similar vein, it’s also I think become a lot more normal to just have platonic friends of the opposite gender. Personally some of my best friends are women who have no desire to date or fuck.
And people are also a lot more willing to have some sort of casual sex, friends with benefits, hookup culture, etc.
So there’s probably a lot of physical and emotional needs that are now being met outside of the context of a romantic relationship when in the past that was pretty much the only way to meet them.
I also feel like a lot of parenting strategies stemmed from preventing teenagers from making mistakes as they tried to assert independence, which is throwing a lot of parents for a loop when kids choose to stay at home and not engage with their peers.
The teenage years are supposed to be the years where people learn how to be an independent adult and society has robbed them from the ability to learn.
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised. Anyone over the age of 25 or so didn’t have everything so blatantly out in the open with the internet as much as they do. When I was a kid we’d look up to adults as people that actually knew what the fuck was going on. Of course, later on in life you realize that nobody knows what the fuck is going on. But people that are growing up now see it for what it is when they’re still in middle-school and highschool. They’re seeing how fucked everything is before they even have a chance to be optimistic. The illusion of stability isn’t just broken, it’s missing entirely.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing, and I wouldn’t call it a “rite of passage.”
It seems like our culture has historically put a lot of emphasis on relationships. For example, one of my older friends (Gen X) used to be treated like he was broken or pitiful because he was single into his thirties. There has been a cultural shift toward the acceptability of singleness, which is much healthier in my opinion.
And on an anecdotal level, I think people are smart to wait until they’re older. I made a lot of regrettable mistakes in my younger relationships that I would not have made had I waited a bit. Not saying that nobody should have relationships when they’re young, but no one should be pressured into it.
I’ve had friends legit pity me because I’m a virgin at 27. Like, I struggled with sexuality for most of my adult life, only figuring out I am gay after 3 boyfriends. I’m not in a rush to get a gf or have sex.
Now my closest group of friends bully me in a friend way about being single and it’s hilarious because they don’t actually pity me or whatever. They respect me and all that and the jokes are just fun between us all.
I’m 17yo and hadn’t really had time to think about this stuff. I guess it’ll just happen someday, I don’t think that’s a “rite of passage” tho, just something I want to explore someday.
I remember my father and everyone else on both sides of my family giving so much crap for not being in a teen relationship. Like bruh, did you see the selection pool of my school? More red flags than China. I look back with 0 regrets.
I can’t say since I’m an older millennial. Back in the day it was tough to find mates. So when personalities clashed, we try out best to reconciled or try to figure things out before breaking up.
I have younger friends who can’t find a stable relationship because the second there is a slight conflict, they can find another person, in some cases on the day of the breakup.
My younger friends is constantly ina perpetual honeymoon phase. Never figuring out how to figure out conflicts and disagreement.
When you grow up in a world where everything is always glorified to be amazing and the best thing ever… What do you expect to happen?
Social media causes more problems that we are not currently aware of…
You don’t like something or see something that upsets you?scroll past it … Get upset at what someone says… Ignore it or move on from it… And forget it…
We live in a world where we don’t build skills to deal with conflicts and the more you absorb yourself into these platforms the worse in real life you are going to be off …
Skills dealing with interaction are not being built in children anymore…
Back in the 90’s even 2000’s you had to deal with your shit… To someone’s face… And that was when things started to go down hill… And we began seeing the rise in things like incels and people like Andrew Tate… I don’t have any examples for how it affected women but I know it happened…
So much truth here. I remember fighting with my friends and eventually being better friends later.
Actually, come to think of it, making friends was actually pretty hard back then too.
