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Television Entertainment

'Let's Watch Netflix: Three Words Guaranteed To Kill a Romantic Mood' (wsj.com) 439

Is streaming video responsible for America's falling fertility rate? 'One of us usually ends up falling asleep.' From a report: Once upon a time, Netflix dates were synonymous with romance, best captured by the viral hashtag #NetflixandChill, a euphemistic suggestion disguised as an invitation to watch TV. These days, the literal chill of the on-demand streaming video service is so great that some young couples call it the new birth control [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled]. [...] Demographers have lots of theories about why the U.S. fertility rate recently hit an all-time low, ranging from the aftereffects of the recession that followed the financial crisis to the broader use of long-term birth control. It is hard to ignore, anecdotally at least, the impact of streaming entertainment, popularized by Netflix and available from the likes of Amazon.com Inc., Hulu and HBO.

A 2017 paper in "Archives of Sexual Behavior," which revealed that Americans were having less sex, on average, than they did three decades ago, offered streaming video as one possible culprit. Dr. Jean Twenge, the lead author and a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, says in the old days a favorite TV show was done at 10 p.m. sharp and commercial breaks gave people an excuse to talk to their partners. "Now, if you're watching something streaming, the next episode is immediately available, and there are no commercials where you could look over and say, 'Honey, you look cute tonight,'" she said.

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'Let's Watch Netflix: Three Words Guaranteed To Kill a Romantic Mood'

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @11:07PM (#58519802)

    > Is streaming video responsible for America's falling fertility rate?

    No. Go back to your basement.

    Rising opportunities and the pressure of economics make children expensive and life harder for the average (and above average person), as well as making you less competitive overall in the short term. This has come to a head in urban areas, where the majority of the populations reside. Space is at a premium, birth control is cheap and education has been effective. Job opportunities are at a premium (especially with all people eligible, not just white men), keeping wages down and competition high = having kids puts you behind.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Or articles telling white people that we should stop having children to save the planet from overpopulation. Or being afraid that someone can decide after the fact that they regret fucking you and now you get charged with rape. Or women no longer do anything for their part of a relationship to justify wanting them as anything more than a fling. If she won't cook, clean, pay half if all bills, look nice, why would any of those improve with a child?

      • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 01, 2019 @12:50AM (#58520108)

        As someone raised in a house where my mom worked full time and didn't cook or clean, and also as an actual 6'4" dude, all I can say to the last bit is what the hell!

        I'm a fully grown a$$ man. If I couldn't do my own cleaning, laundry, and cooking by now I'd be so embarassed I don't think I'd tell anyone. That's like telling people you can't wipe your own a$$...AS an ADULT!!! What the ever living hell????

        For the rest, yeah I pretty much don't want to bring kids into a world that I know will not give them the opportunities their parents and especially grandparents had. Automation alone pretty much means they will have to graduate at the tops of their classes in healthcare, law, or goverment related fields to have a chance.

        Aint no kind of world to bring a kid into. It's like pointing them to a cliff and telling them their future lies in being able to learn how to walk on air. You'd have to be a seriously messed up sociopath or narcissist (or both alah Kardashians...) to want to bring kids into a world with that future.

        No thanks! I'll take the bill for the past generations sins and turn the light off and close the door when I leave. And everyone will be the better for it. Never needed to leave anything behind. Never needed to be rich or famous....

    • by bluefoxlucid ( 723572 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2019 @08:18AM (#58521342) Homepage Journal

      More simply, sex is sex, and fertility is decision. People have sex without making babies and they make babies by planning to have babies and then having sex and then going to the doctor to demand a week of birth control so they can induce fertility so they'll actually get pregnant when they have sex. Fertility is driven by long-term planning, not spontaneous arousal.

    • There's another big one tied closely to the fiercely competitive diminishing return culture were created: Stress. We're having to work and struggle harder and harder just to avoid falling behind - we're facing the first generations in the history of civilization where young adults can expect a lower quality of life than their parents, and there's no sign of improvement on the horizon.

      That creates a very stressful environment, even before you consider social media making everyone else's life look better tha

      • There's another big one tied closely to the fiercely competitive diminishing return culture were created: Stress. We're having to work and struggle harder and harder just to avoid falling behind - we're facing the first generations in the history of civilization where young adults can expect a lower quality of life than their parents,

        Yeah, those people back in the 1930's depression were wealthy and everyone who died in World war 2 had it sooo much better - didn't they?

        You really, really need to read some history, and absorb it. Previous generations in the civilized era had to deal with basic survival. And today's young folks are falling apart from stress.

        Now mind you - just like you, I blame your parents. But not for the same reason. They protected you from adversity. They made certain you were absolutely safe. They had you parti

    • by pnutjam ( 523990 )
      Yeah, the majority of this is income based. People that want kids can't afford them.
  • by Q-Hack! ( 37846 ) on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @11:08PM (#58519814)

    Just seems to take my wife right out of the mood.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Most people I know in the 18-36 range aren't in a serious relationship anymore. Men and women tell me they don't want to get married, and this is going to effect the whole "lets have a baby" thing.
    People do Kinder and PoF, or go to the bar to meet someone. They don't want long term, they want the sex without the strings of a relationship.
    No, not everyone does this, but its a hell of a lot more common of answers now then it was 20 years ago.

  • Of course, an unmentioned wildcard is that this emotional shift occurred as Netflix was actively dumping third-party content and focussing more on their self-produced fare. Perhaps people aren’t as turned on by Kevin Spacey and Taylor Schilling as they were by Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.

  • by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2019 @12:49AM (#58520106) Homepage

    There is a certain segment of young people whose relationships are almost entirely online. Which is a pretty effective means of birth control...

  • by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2019 @01:03AM (#58520146)

    "Netflix: Better than sex."

    I've heard some suggestions, though not backed up by conclusive research, that the flood of compelling entertainment is also responsible for the fall in violent crime rate. Hard to keep a decent gang of criminal thugs going when everyone wants to stay home playing games and watching TV.

  • Inter-/episode breaks with romantic content intended to warm the both of you up. Hey, as long as you're paying the monthly subscription fees, Netflix should be ok with it one way or the other, right?

  • by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2019 @01:32AM (#58520216)
    I heard America was full and I was concerned you would all get squished.
  • Beautiful people (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cerberusss ( 660701 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2019 @02:06AM (#58520294) Journal

    What I don't like, is the amount of beautiful people on American series. Unrealistic too, they'd have a shot with the lead actress getting up in the morning. She'd get up with full and beautiful makeup, hair carefully curled, impossibly skinny, sexy yet modest nightgown, then do a fake yawn.

    British TV is entirely not that way. Look at series like Vera (with Brenda Blethlyn [wikipedia.org]) or Happy Valley (with Sarah Lancashire [wikipedia.org]). Or Dalziel and Pascoe (with Warren Clarke [imdb.com]), where Dalziel is an overweight, bad-mouthed, unkempt and always-pissed police officer.

    Look for three hours at Jason Momoa and it wouldn't surprise me if women unconsciously sorta lose interest in the tired, overworked and overweight guy lying next to them on the couch.

    • where Dalziel is an overweight, bad-mouthed, unkempt and always-pissed police officer.

      So only beautiful by UK standards? /puts on asbestos overcoat and runs.

    • by Areyoukiddingme ( 1289470 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2019 @12:32PM (#58522906)

      Look for three hours at Jason Momoa and it wouldn't surprise me if women unconsciously sorta lose interest in the tired, overworked and overweight guy lying next to them on the couch.

      This is a very large contributing factor. And specifically it's women's preferences that are contributing. Every man wanted Cindy Crawford or Pamela Anderson or whoever, but he knew he couldn't have her, so he settled. Women today have had their heads filled with "empowerment" and "you can be anything you want" and "you're so amazing" and "you should never settle." And they don't.

      As has been reported, 80% of the women are chasing 20% of the men. We have the numbers. Yay for big data and the Internet. They won't settle. They're all determined to get their Jason Momoa and they will accept nothing less. So yeah, fertility is down. Too bad.

  • People get more and more selfish every generation. Children are ugly, annoying, smelly, unrewarding, and very very expensive. It is a lot cheaper and easier and far more rewarding just to buy a pet if you want something to pet and cuddle with. Your pet won't start to hate and ignore you when they hit adolescence either.

    So what has changed? Not only are people getting more selfish they are also getting more resistant to the traditional messages of what life is about. There are fewer breeders probably for the

  • "I read slashdot"

  • by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2019 @03:25AM (#58520462)

    ...millennials are drinking less & so they're having less sex.

    Beer. Helping ugly people get laid for at least 7,000 years. Drink more beer, have more sex.

    This message was brought to you by Anheuser-Busch InBev.

  • by mapkinase ( 958129 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2019 @03:41AM (#58520498) Homepage Journal

    Since the invention of TV. The decreased libido of first world is a known phenomenon. It has multipronged causes and availability of online entertainment is only one of them.

    That's just another example of trashy journalism

  • by burningcpu ( 1234256 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2019 @04:06AM (#58520578)
    Expectations as to child care and monitoring have increased greatly, while the ability of the parents to provide such has plummeted. My Mom would be arrested nowadays.

    She was a single mother without a high school education and worked multiple jobs. She gave me a lot of independence, even when I was very young, but this came with responsibilities. I was able to be part of the solution. Starting in 2nd grade, I woke, fed myself, dressed and put myself on the bus. I was taught more skills as I aged, gaining independence but also providing more help to the family. I did much of the grocery shopping by the time I was in middle school.

    She would be ostracized, today. The lessons taught and ethics gained would be ignored, and the focus upon the 'danger' she was putting me in. Where the 'danger' is simply walking about an existing in our society. When did this fear come about? Violent crime is drastically reduced from the "good old days" of the 70's. Yet we walk in fear.

    So, we've raised a generation of scared children. They've been taught obedience and through practices like 'zero tolerance,' have lost the courage to stand up for themselves and do not understand the balance of inaction versus risk in conflict. It's largely not the fault of the millennial. They were raised this way. My generation fears so much. We've watched as measure after measure of life quality has dropped below what our parents encountered.

    Raising children is arguably one of the scariest and 'riskiest' adventures of which one will embark.
    • By the way, this is an American thing. Other countries do not have the same absurd expectations of parents. [amazon.com]

      • by ffkom ( 3519199 )
        It was indeed very funny to overhear a conversation on a small liveabord boat in Indonesia, where a few couples from different places in the world were one time talking about their families. The old US couple mentioned how great it was that now, finally, after retiring and their children being out of college they could go on such journeys as diving some remote coral reefs in Indonesia.
        The young French couple mentioned that their three children aged 2, 5 and 7 years where of course staying back at home whil
        • They dropped their jaws realizing that their children were going to be dropping off the grandkids for weeks at a time in a few years to go diving.
        • "A diving trip would certainly be unsuitable for them." Hahahaha Thank you for sharing!
    • Versus throwing them in the back of a station wagon as would've been done in my parents' day, it is hard to accomodate more than two car seats in most vehicles. Add in the social expectations of parental involvement, and the idea that children must be constantly accompanied, and the idea of having more than two is quickly overwhelming.
      • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        You should read "What to expect when nobody is expecting"

        There is a whole chapter on how most of our policy is pro-child but anti-family. Car seats are offered as an example of this. A car that has seating for six, will still only accommodate 4 if car seats must be installed in legally mandated fashion. Unless you purchase a vehicle with three rows of seats its basically impossible for a family with more than two children to travel together. That is something many families simply can't afford to do.

        While

        • I would, but I already have kids, so the time I have to read is spent with Captain Underpants! To your point, though, is that if both parents work you also will have logistical trouble if both cars can't carry everyone, so you would either both need minivans or ensure that the one car that can carry everyone is new/reliable enough to not need much more than an oil change. Any shop repairs would grind family life to a halt.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Dallas May ( 4891515 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2019 @06:20AM (#58520930)

    I am married. My wife and I have stable good paying jobs. We own our home. I have two kids and want zero more. Why don't I want any more kids?

    KIDS ARE ****ING EXPENSIVE!

    Seriously. Kids are really ****ing expensive. No one can afford any more.

    • by ffkom ( 3519199 )
      If you are Nike or H&M, then kids are the cheaper kind of employees who build your stuff. It's all a matter of perspective.
    • I am married. My wife and I have stable good paying jobs. We own our home. I have two kids and want zero more. Why don't I want any more kids?

      KIDS ARE ****ING EXPENSIVE!

      Seriously. Kids are really ****ing expensive. No one can afford any more.

      The costs are diminishing as you have more kids, if my friends with large families are to be believed. They always say something along the lines of, "If you have three, you might as well have five." But one parent or the other is not working outside the home.

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      I am married. My wife and I have stable good paying jobs. We own our home. I have two kids and want zero more. Why don't I want any more kids? KIDS ARE ****ING EXPENSIVE! Seriously. Kids are really ****ing expensive. No one can afford any more.

      Yet in Africa where people are dirt poor they all have five kids. This is more an effect than then cause, when people only have one or two kids they can afford to buy them all these things and spend all this time and set the bar ridiculously high for the rest. High earners have never [freakonomics.com] been the ones to have many kids. I think you know how you could raise five kids, it's not that you can't it's that it'd cramp the whole family's life style pretty hard. That's also the reason most people now delay having a kid

  • I guess we've watched most things we want to see on it. It's suggestions are terrible. It's largely the same handful of titles showing up in the Latest, Popular, and a few of the genres lists. Sometimes we use a third party site to find better recommendations more easily and then search for them directly. A lot of the time we get tired of it and watch something free on youtube or turn of the TV.

  • ... submarine races now?

  • People in the middle class and below are still not doing very well. Adjusted for inflation most of us are making less money than our parents at the same time in their lives. We're worried about house payments, car payments, student loan payments, and more. Our parents likely haven't seen raises (if they're still employed) of significant amounts in some time either.

    Streaming video is cheap. Raising children is not. If you're already living paycheck to paycheck it's hard to get excited about the idea
  • First it was TV. Then computers. But the real coffin nail to fertility rates is smart phones. Why go foster human relationships when one's need for interaction can be met in an "on demand" manner with your Iphone?

    Those who came of age before smart phones still have human interaction ingrained in them. This will change as new generations come up who are introduced to interactive content at earlier and earlier ages.

    "I felt like putting a bullet between the eyes of every Panda that wouldn't screw to sa
  • by nucrash ( 549705 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2019 @10:21AM (#58522088)

    Apparently it's Netflix and Moodkill?

  • More people are waiting longer to have kids, putting career first for a while. That said, when my wife and I were younger and Netflix wasn't streaming just yet, we'd watch DVR'd First 48, Deadliest Catch, have a romp, then goto sleep, have a romp around 2:30am, go back to sleep, and another romp in the morning. Now we watch Netflix, Prime, or DVR and one of us falls asleep. We have 3 kids now thanks to all of those romps, so we're older and more tired. My advice: romp first, then watch Netflix so if som

  • by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2019 @12:58PM (#58523024) Journal

    Like plenty of people are commenting here, we've reached a saturation point, at least in America. We went from one person being able to work a full-time job and keep a family's bills paid to both parents having to work full-time to make ends meet. And now, the cost of kids just keeps increasing, with prospects greater than ever that they won't even move out or become self-sustaining, productive citizens without their parents' financial help, as they become adults.

    My wife and I are both in our late 40's, and we have a "blended family" with one kid of mine from a previous marriage and 2 of hers from one. We both work full-time career I.T. jobs and while we're able to just barely keep our heads above water to retain a "middle class" lifestyle, it's pretty crazy how often you want to do something and simply can't because the kids make it financially impossible.

    For example, our oldest one really wanted to go out to eat with the whole family on her birthday. We used to always do things like that on all the kid's birthdays. But it used to be a lot cheaper because they were all under age 11 or 12 and got to eat cheaper food from a kid's menu, or got a discount at a buffet. Now, all 3 count as full price - and as they've become pre-teens/teens, their food tastes have gotten picker and more expensive too. So that birthday dinner at Macaroni Grill cost us something like $150. And that was with both of us opting out of any alcoholic drinks, since those are always a lot more expensive than just getting water or a soda or something. Used to be, those kinds of meals never cost us more than $50-ish.

    Summer vacations are another challenge. We've pretty much forgone doing any of that beyond little 2-3 days weekend trips someplace relatively close in the summer because it just puts us way too far into credit card debt otherwise.

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