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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.