"Male loneliness epidemic" = "all lives matter." Though counterintuitive, they both attempt to bring increased attention to men on an issue that is already universal. There is a loneliness epidemic conversation you could join.
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2025
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Shit. I've had sex that made me feel even more alone than before.
(Had to figure out how to word that.)
"Male loneliness epidemic" is about male friendships more than anything no?
Yea everyone knows as soon as you have sex once you never feel lonely again.
Seems like a lot of incels really believe it though
Indeed, which may actually be the source of their problems, or at least one of them.
Yeah, totally! Getting my dick wet is precisely the kind of emotional and intellectual connection I'm missing! The penis is my data transfer cable.
The penis is my data transfer cable.
That could almost be a CAKE lyric
[USB Connection sound]
Remember to safely unmount
"premarital sex" also known as sex
yeah but it was a one night stand so you know it made them feel extra less lonely
How does having sex once same as not being lonely? Sure I am lonely and virgin. But, I could just as easily be not virgin and still lonely AF.
Yea, I would imagine a 30-40 yo virgin may end up getting a sex worker. having sex with a sex worker doesn't really reduce loneliness.
>It's not just about getting laid (though that's part of it.)
>It's also about friends
>But even in the "getting laid" part, it's moreso about a real emotional connection in conjunction with the sex, I believe they're called "relationships."
>while some is just incels, it's also normal people
>If we had more Third Spaces that aren't centered around booze and money, it'd go a long way to helping the issue
>it's not just men.
The "while some is just incels" in your code comment part had me for a while, genuinely made me think of programming
- That is sex. You can have all the sex you want and still be lonely.
- Those stats are probably the "we asked some people" kind which means everyone who had their first relationship at 24 will say that "oh yeah technically i was with that random girl in grade school so you know what lets say its 12"
Anon conflates the desire for a more involved and expanded social life with just having sex, thereby perfectly explaining their lack of a more involved and expanded social life.
That’s definitely a decent chunk of what people in the media who talk about the ‘male loneliness epidemic’ are talking about, though. I don’t think I’ve read a single article about it that doesn’t devote time to how little sex young men allegedly aren’t having.
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Those stats cannot be right.
They’re not.
A quick google search:
In Japan, roughly 50% of young adults aged 18-29 report being virgins.
In the UK, about 46% of people aged 16-24 identify as virgins
10% of US males under 34 are virgins. (Source)
EDIT: The OP seems to be citing data from at least 15 years ago. But that’s precisely the problem: the world seems to have changed in that time. We have 3 times the number of virgins across age groups in just a few years, for instance.
That is not how source work. Without citation you are just claiming that it is a different number. This is in no way better than what you are disputing.
It's from this site which seems to aggregate different sources.
I dont know what it's worth.
edit: typo
It made me feel better so it's real now.
18-29
That's hell of a range here. You can be 19 when you've been asked the question and lose your virginity next year.
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They also want to capture the "lonely man" demographic and make them feel like it's not their fault, engage them and get their clicks/dollars.
16.8? jesus.
I wanna see some breakdowns of these stats by country and socioeconomic factors
Is it usually earlier in the US? Sounds a bit on the high side for where I live too.
Imo sounds about right, people were getting mighty horny around that time and started having sex. Few years earlier even
I lost my v card at either 16 or 17, I forget which year exactly...
So yeah, 16.8 makes sense as an average.
Yeah. Even if we assume that the average age was 1 or 2 years higher when I was that age, there's no way that the numbers in my highschool class where anywhere close to that. Out of like 16 guys, I know of only a couple who even had a girlfriend while in school, which is probably more likely than casual sex at that age.
Plenty could have relationships outside school that they didn't talk much about.
I had my first sex at 16 and first relationships at 11, and my classmates weren't even remotely aware of how rich of a romantic/sexual life I already had, or that I had it at all.
I wasn't known as someone particularly likeable, either.
The number seems about right to me. Puberty starts at 12-ish, so does sexual exploration.
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Yup. the sexual loneliness epidemic is easing up, because we're all fighting back to 'normal'. But ask most men this simple question: how many non-sexual friends do you have in your life that you communicate with more than once a week?
Is it normal to talk to friends more than once a week? That seems like a strange standard imo. Even my besties and I touch base maybe once or twice a month at most, and see eachother once every 4 to 6 months.
Is it normal to talk to friends more than once a week?
Yes. It's very normal to talk to several friends per day, and to see several friends each week. Rotating through one's universe of friends, that might mean that there are a few friends you talk to at least a few times per week, some that you talk to a few times per month, and a some that you talk to a few times per year. And maybe you actually meet up in person a few times so that you're still seeing friends in person every week.
That level frequency isn't necessary, but it's kinda shocking to me that your comment suggests that you find it surprising that many other people are doing this.
I think that level of interaction might be normal in adolescence and even young adulthood, but by the time you're working, living on your own, and maybe have a family I really don't think most people talk to their friends that often.
I'm in my 40's, and I have children. My wife and I both work full time jobs that require regular travel and responsibilities outside of normal business hours.
I have probably 5-10 chat threads in different apps that I maintain with different friend groups. Some are just stupid meme exchanges, but they're also a regular way to keep in touch with people about their kids, jobs, families, hobbies, goals, etc. But I communicate with dozens of friends on any given day.
My mom also demands regular grandchild content on a constant feed so I actually keep in touch with my family better than when I didn't have kids.
I have a standing neighborhood parent/kid meetup once a week where my kids get to play with their neighborhood friends while we parents hang out at some local restaurant. We text each other the day of to coordinate a place, and then maybe 3-5 of the families (out of a group of maybe 6-8 regulars and 2-4 fringe participants) will show up on any given week. This is on top of the occasional dinner party on the weekends. We don't make it to every event, but we are averaging more than one meetup per week with our friends with kids near our kids' ages.
I'm also friends with people at work. I have a standing monthly happy hour with work friends I've kept in touch with, even as people have taken different jobs or made other career changes.
I also do an annual camping trip in the summer with one group of friends, and an annual ski trip with another group of friends. It's only once a year for each, but there's also a lot of value in 48+ hour meetups, sitting around with downtime throughout, just catching up and talking around a fire or something.
My parents had church when they were my age. I don't. But I still try to schedule regular things on the calendar to stay plugged into different groups. It's important to me, and it didn't come naturally, but these are things my friends and I implemented in our 30's when socializing started requiring coordinating calendars. Especially once the friends' wedding weekends dropped off and seeing out of town friends required coordination without an actual occasion to celebrate.
That's awesome and it sounds like it works for you, but I suspect it isn't the norm. I could only find data for 50+ year olds, and among them only 24% talk to friends daily. That seems about right for my adult friends group - I get the sense that a quarter of them are very social and the rest are too busy to socialize that often.
among them only 24% talk to friends daily
I think it's fair to infer that a big chunk of the 76% are still talking to friends at least once a week, at least 1/7 as frequently as the 24%.
I don't mean to say that talking to friends at least once a week is the only way to be friends, or that it represents a majority of friendships (although maybe it might be). The part of the original comment that got me to weigh in was the idea that speaking once a week with friends was unusual or strange. That, I think, underappreciates how it can be feasible and maybe even desirable to keep in more regular contact with multiple friends.
That sounds normal to me, but it’s worth noting that when we were under Covid lockdown, I didn’t understand how so many people freaked out about it. I’ve always been sucky at social interactions and pretty much always felt lonely as a baseline. It’s like I’d been training for lockdown my entire life. Seeing others lose their minds trying to live the way I’ve always lived was quite awkward.
Which means for many people, your/my standards for social contact are way too infrequent. I don’t know what an average measurement would be, but it’s clear that our “normal” can’t be most people’s “normal.”
i think a simple "what do you feel right now" would stump half the population.
If they dont answer with the predifined "fine"
The predifined “fine” is either a real “i don’t know “ or “it’s too socially dangerous for me to say what I really feel “ imho
Or even “I think it would be nice to talk to you in more detail, but it’s really difficult to summarize my entire mental state in a short sentence, so to avoid you and I the headache, I’m just gonna say fine.”
IDK about 'loneliness epidemic', but 'lonely' IS my normal.
I do communicate with some friends more than once a week, but none of them even live in the same city as I do.
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