>It also won’t do to point to changes over this time period that effected all ages and genders similarly, such as obesity, porn, video games, social media, dating apps, and wariness re harassment claims.
I think this is wrong. I don't believe these things effect all ages and genders similarly. For instance, I think we would find that the rate of young men playing video games and watching porn are much higher than for young women. I'm not saying that young women don't do these things, but I don't believe these things are engaged in at the same rates as young men.
Also, many older men are already married. Even if they do view porn at similar rates to young men, this might not affect the rate at which they are having sex with their wives. And, in my experience, older men and women are not playing video games at the same rates as young men.
All true, but it's important to establish cause and effect. Is a young man being addicted to porn and LoL a cause or an effect of not getting laid? It's probably some kind of complicated feedback loop.
Not to mention that historically video games and pornography both have been marketed towards and produced for men in the age group affected much more than women in the same age group.
Yes, I'd also disagree with this. You can't just make a sweeping assertion like this without data to back it up. Wariness re harassment claims is alone a huge one, women in my office have joked about complaining against a guy just to show what they could get away with. I've never heard of a guy doing the same even though I spend way more time around them.
>>For instance, I think we would find that the rate of young men playing video games and watching porn are much higher than for young women. I'm not saying that young women don't do these things, but I don't believe these things are engaged in at the same rates as young men.
I don't know about porn, but data strongly disagrees with this when it comes to gaming.
This source indicates that nearly 50% of people who play video games are women, but it does not indicate anything about the time spent gaming. It is quite possible that men are a bare majority of gamers but play a super-majority of the hours spent gaming.
That could be the case, but unless you have actual data supporting it, it's just speculation.
My point is: the perception that most gamers are men, who on average spend more of their time gaming than women, lacks supporting data. It is easily explained by psychological factors such as confirmation bias and stereotyping.
I think your comment on perceptions of gamers misses the point that "gamers" are people who spend lots of time playing video games. The research on the wikipedia page isn't about "gamers". It's about people who play video games at some level of frequency, which is a much broader category. This is why our intuitions about "gamers" turn out to be accurate, even though they are not consistent with the data about the much larger category of "people who play video games".
To some extent there may be reinforcement dynamics at play here. For instance: young men fall back on video games because they can't find sex partners, and then the kind of guys who play a lot of video games are not desirable sex partners..
I think this is wrong. I don't believe these things effect all ages and genders similarly. For instance, I think we would find that the rate of young men playing video games and watching porn are much higher than for young women. I'm not saying that young women don't do these things, but I don't believe these things are engaged in at the same rates as young men.
Also, many older men are already married. Even if they do view porn at similar rates to young men, this might not affect the rate at which they are having sex with their wives. And, in my experience, older men and women are not playing video games at the same rates as young men.