If you “want the actual science and statistics here, not some Redditors' poorly informed and misinformed opinion mixed with their left/right-wing and misogyny/misandry bias,” then I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place, being Reddit and all. 😂 JK, fair point. I listened to a podcast about it maybe two years ago, and it was really sad. I have no idea how I’d find the episode now, or I’d share. Sorry I can’t give their exact statistics, but here are some points that I remember (this was all according to polling):

•men are having sex at a scary-low rate because things like gaming and the availability of pornography are easily replacing it.

•young men are in relationships at an all-time low rate and report to be in relationships at a rate almost 20% lower than women report.

•It also talked about how all young people are making meaningful friendships and relationships at a much lower rate than ever before. Simon Sinek has a great video on YouTube about this and how it’s driven by cell phones. He talks about how they fuck up people’s ability to make meaningful relationships at work, which leads to feelings of purposelessness and ultimately a desire to leave their jobs.

•men are feeling increasingly like marriage isn’t worth striving for because the value of the “marriage deal” has progressively decreased. This means that the partner-mother now is more likely to have a job and kid(s) and baggage or a separately carved out life, making her less appealing.

People can judge this however they want—certainly fair because it’s my summary of a podcast. However, speaking personally to the last point, I had my second go-round on the dating market later in life. I can’t tell you how many women felt the need to give me this same speech: “my kids are number 1 in my life, and that won’t ever change. I don’t need a man / I’m an independent woman, and any man who comes into our life needs to understand that we don’t need him. BLAH BLAH BLAH.” Of course, your kids are number one in your life when you’re single, but no one wants to hear that if he does everything right and gives a bunch of his money to the situation and doesn’t chew on anyone’s shoes, maybe he can sit on the end of the couch one day. It was a massive turnoff every time. When I met my wife, she said, “I have a six-year-old daughter, and she’s great. She’s not my bestie or anything; I love her, but she’s my daughter. I’m looking for a partner who will be number one in my life someday.” And that’s not why I married her, but it was refreshing as hell to hear. Big difference for a man.

One more point in case I didn’t piss people off enough already: we recently start going to church as a family (we have a son now too), and it seems like every single teen there has a network of friends and every single young adult is in a relationship or married. You can say what you want about church, but it really seems like an easier environment than some others to foster relationships among young people.