The stats are out, and the facts are in: young men are not having sex.
What’s the driving force behind this new reality? Well, according to Elon Musk, it is not due to porn. Elon Musk is a genius. Does anyone want to ride on SpaceX and head to Mars? But every genius can still miss a few things, and I’m afraid Musk has missed the mark on this new dilemma. Look at the exchange that took place on X recently between Musk and social media influencer Matt Walsh regarding the graph above:
Walsh stated, “A lot of theories to explain this but it’s very clearly like 98 percent because of porn.”
This is when Musk responded, “It’s not porn, which has been readily available from the days of VHS tapes, but rather the general temptation of the online world if you’re going to blame it on anything electronic.”
The key detail that Musk is missing is…
the seismic shift that took place in the years just before the rise in virginity. In 2006 we went from dial-up internet to high speed, which meant we went from mostly photos to videos. In 2007 we had the birth of the smartphone, which ushered in an in-your-pocket access to porn. An unprecedented amount of hardcore pornography was unleashed on the adolescent brain which is more susceptible to addictive substances. The magnitude of these two shifts cannot be overstated when answering the question, “Why aren’t young men having sex?”
The Freedom Fight has interacted with tens of thousands of men since we started helping people find freedom from pornography addiction. During this time, key reasons have been identified about why they aren’t having sex, and all of them are related to pornography.
False Advertising
Before we look at the evidence based on testimonies and research, we have to acknowledge the reality that the porn industry is going to powerfully push back on any research that would put them in a bad light. They took a page out of the tobacco industry’s playbook from the 50’s and 60’s. The tobacco giants invested heavily in research. Their goal wasn’t to win the research argument. They just had to question the research, share a different interpretation, and make it an open question that needed more study. This proved effective as they suppressed the deadly impact of smoking for decades.
The porn industry is bigger than the NBA, NFL, MLB and Nascar combined. It is over a 100 billion dollar industry so it has a lot of reasons and resources to suppress potentially incriminating research.1 It’s not surprising, and even expected, that when news organizations report on the historically low amount of sex 18 to 30-year-olds are having they don’t even mention pornography as one of the possible contributors.
Guess what they do mention? Social media, gaming, binge-watching, and juggling work and relationships are all the guilty culprits according to them. Conspicuously absent is any mention of pornography. Some news agencies included pornography in their list of reasons but not usually as a major driver.
We are only on the front end of this tsunami when the full effects of unleashing so much x-rated material on the young brain. We are beginning to reap what we have sown. We live in a pro-porn world where one leading educational program (AMAZE) teaches pre-teens that porn is normal – ‘even a few times a day’.2 Beware of the experts and their research. Jesus described the god of this world as ‘the father of lies’.
Stats That Should Get Our Attention
The reality is porn has brought on an onslaught of negative consequences. We must be willing to connect the dots between our current conflict of low sex among young males, and the overwhelming access adolescents have had to porn since 2007.
During adolescence, the brain is pruning neurological connections, and the use it or lose it paradigm determines which connections remain. Considering the huge dopamine dump that takes place when a young person is viewing porn, their brain reinforces the porn pathways.
Gary Wilson, in his book Your Brain on Porn, states,
“Once new connections form, teen brains hold tightly to these associations. In fact, research shows that our most powerful and lasting memories arise from adolescence along with our worst habits.”3
Young minds are more susceptible to addictions. If someone gets hooked on an addictive substance before they are 18, the chances that it becomes a lifelong struggle go way up. This is why we have laws in place to keep addictive substances away from the adolescent brain. Parents have no idea that when they hand their 12-year-old a smartphone they are giving them access to a highly addictive substance in porn. I have lost track of the number of guys who were forever hooked on porn after one exposure in their adolescents.
One young man got his iPod touch at age 11 and watched at least an hour of porn a day for the next ten years and his parents never knew. Over that decade his brain had made a strong connection to porn. Those of us who work with college students have a front-row seat to the impact of porn on the adolescent brain as each freshman class shows up with deeper and deeper addictions to porn.
Combine this reality with the rise of teenagers’ access to cell phones, and we have a deadly combination. In 2011 only 35% of teens had access to a smartphone. Fast forward to 2019 and that percentage jumped to 95%!4 So today, nearly every teen has in-your-pocket access to porn. No restrictions. Unlimited access. Are we ready to start connecting some dots?
Over the next few weeks in our blogs, we are going to unpack the top 3 reasons why young men are having less sex. These include:
- PIED (Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction).
- Sexual preferences are getting warped by porn.
- The convenience and no rejection of porn and masturbation.
Diving into these is going to help us identify what porn truly delivers. It promises sexual fulfillment but delivers impotence. It promises sexual freedom but delivers enslavement. It promises intimacy but delivers isolation and broken relationships.
If you are looking for a resource to jump-start your journey to freedom, take our 30-day challenge!
1 – Ross Benes, Porn could have a bigger economic influence on the US than Netflix, 2018, https://www.yahoo.com/tech/porn-could-bigger-economic-influence-121524565.html
2 – Mt. Diablo Unified School District uses AMAZE and Advocates for Youth material for fifth-grade sexual education curriculum; AMAZE videos include teaching students about watching pornography and masturbation, 2024, https://defendinged.org/incidents/mt-diablo-unified-school-district-uses-amaze-and-advocates-for-youth-material-for-fifth-grade-sexual-education-curriculum-amaze-videos-include-teaching-students-about-watching-pornography-and-mastur/
3 – Your Brain on Porn, Gary Wilson, pg. 38
4 – Monica Anderson, JingJing Jiang,Teens, Social Media and Technology 2018, 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/05/31/teens-social-media-technology-2018/
