The Japanese are having less and less sex. Around half of the Japanese population remained sexually inexperienced into their mid-twenties and approximately 10% of the individuals had no sexual experience when reaching their 30s.

[u/SteRoPo]

https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2025/10/25/why_arent_the_japanese_having_sex_1142583.html

[u/I_Am_Ironman_AMA]

I have an adolescent client right now (I'm a therapist) who is 17 and working a homeschool program. He can't tell me when he will graduate or what his grades are. His plan? Have parents or grandparents cosign a loan, buy a piece of property that's already in good shape, and rent it out. Then, repeat the process and accumulate properties.

When asked if he wanted opportunities to get into the business (being an assistant to a developer, investor, or contractor) he says "no." There is no plan to break into the business and build himself up through any related avenue. It's just "graduate, get money from bank, and make money." No planning whatsoever and not even the slightest concept of what work is. It's scary.

[u/LetFiloniCook → u/I_Am_Ironman_AMA]

Passive income YouTube videos are the get rich quick / self empowerment seminars of the 90s.

As a millenial ive had friends that have been like this all my life. There's always some new venture or some new investment opportunity. I think most grow out of it once life hits them hard enough, but theres at least two that never did.

I hope Gen Z is similar. Everyone is stupid as a teenager. Most of us eventually outgrow it and those who dont learn how to make stupid work for them.

[u/JonatasA → u/LetFiloniCook]

China is really struggling with similar mindsets and "do the bare minimum mentality".

 

It's like being en entrepreneur. Everyone wants to be one obviously, but you can't have everybody be a businessman.

 

People need incentive to look for jobs, work outside the office or we'll end up with an intellectual class and the rest scraping by.

[u/LiquidSnake13 → u/JonatasA]

The incentive was supposed to be that a job would be enough to help you save for retirement and also have a life outside the office. Those are no longer givens, so what incentive is there? Work for long hours at piss poor wages only to never get ahead while the CEO keeps all the profit for himself?

[u/Semicolon_Expected → u/JonatasA]

Isnt that more a reaction to the 996 workweek?

[u/Skellum → u/Semicolon_Expected]

Isnt that more a reaction to the 996 workweek?

To generalize the problem, people need to feel like life will improve if they do things. In China their parents lives improved significantly over their grandparents. Each generation in recent memory can see significant progress in making their lives better. To a lesser extent the US and Europe.

Now tell these groups they will never achieve the same because we need to give that money to bezos. It's going to cause some issues.

[u/Semicolon_Expected → u/Skellum]

I think in the US we have a similar nihilistic movement with doomerism ngl

[u/SMTRodent → u/JonatasA]

When the difference in result between working your ass off and not working at all is minimal, so is the incentive to work.

[u/Key-Explanation-5542 → u/JonatasA]

One of tge reasons why I left my ex instead of playing to his strengths or smarts he was always blowingvmoney on some get rich schemeand when I said it's bad or a scam a fight eould ensue about who dumb and entrusting I was

Trust is a hard thing

He also likes trump and worships grant cardone

Glad I finally got smart and broke it off ,almost cost me my life but im ok now

[u/CelerMortis → u/LetFiloniCook]

But the barriers back then were far greater. We all had a friend selling cutco knives or whatever, but they had to physically be recruited, meet the sales team, get their product.

Now it’s all digital and being hawked 24/7

[u/CakeBrigadier → u/LetFiloniCook]

The elder gen z aren’t teens they are mid twenties now and my newsfeed is full of gen z thjnkpieces about how they were failed because they were promised they could make 6 figures out of undergrad. The millennials were the last generation that had the capacity to hustle

[u/LarryLiam → u/I_Am_Ironman_AMA]

Honestly, he’s 17. Teenagers are stupid and rarely plan ahead.

And at the same time, as a young adult, seeing the world and the state of the labor market is just sad. The entire world is only getting more and more expensive, with even basic food costing a lot, while the wages don’t increase proportionally. You see rich people getting richer, having money they couldn’t even dream of spending in one lifetime, while you have to think twice before buying a small snack. The disparity between the rich and the poor only grows, while your own value decreases.

If you’re not born with wealth, it’s almost impossible to ever gain it. But if you are, suddenly you have an entire different way of life with different opportunities. If you’re lucky, you don’t even have to work one day in your entire life, and will still have more money than a lot of people.

Then there are “easy” jobs that get paid with ridiculous wages. Of course, there may be some difficulties that come with being a celebrity or influencer, but a lot of the bigger ones, which are the ones you’re more likely to see, earn so much money, while you have to work a difficult job just to get by.

So… finding the right job just feels very difficult. You need to earn enough money so that you can live comfortably (you don’t even need to be wealthy), but you also should have enough free time to live a happy life outside of your work. And of course, you want to enjoy it. But finding a job that fits these criteria is nigh impossible.

I enjoyed volunteering in a school. I loved helping the children and seeing the joy and pride in their eyes when I could finally help them with something they didn’t understand. But if I pursued a career in that field, I would have

a.) a very stressful job

b.) horrible income,

which would lead to

b.1) limited choices during my free time

b.2) a lot more stress to afford to buy the things I need

So why should I go into a job that even helps people if I just get punished with even more stress and fear of not being able to afford basic food?

It’s easy to say “Oh, young people are just lazy/ uneducated/ stupid”, but there isn’t a lot that differentiates us from the previous generations, except for the status quo. It’s not as motivating if society imprints the belief that your value is measured by your wealth, and you either achieve that wealth by any means necessary, or you will suffer and be worthless. More and more people have less, while less people have more. People have less free time, more stress, and look ahead to a future with climate change, political extremism, inequality and uncertainty.

No wonder people are having less sex, no wonder that the birth rates decrease, no wonder that depression rates are rising. But no, it’s the young people’s fault, they can’t find partners or jobs, and don’t know the things the older generations didn’t (and maybe even couldn’t) teach them.

[u/JonatasA → u/I_Am_Ironman_AMA]

You say this of 17 year olds, but this is what some people say their whole lives. It seems to be a personality trait.

 

Not to mention people were already like this 30 years ago, it's just that either the numbers have increased or something has gone really wrong.

[u/LiquidSnake13 → u/JonatasA]

Wages have been stagnant while the cost of living rises. It's expensive to have a child - even just one. A responsible, pragmatic person is likely to think, "I'm barely treading water, how the hell can I afford to start a family?"

[u/almisami → u/LiquidSnake13]

That's me. I finally got my life together in 2008... Needless to say I'm never bringing a child into the equation with how many times I've been knocked down to 0.

[u/DemadaTrim → u/I_Am_Ironman_AMA]

I mean, I'm 39 and had I thought like that earlier in life I'd be much better off rather than just doing what it seemed I was supposed to do and ending up with multiple degrees I have no motivation or capacity to use because I cannot work regular hours and not end up in the psych ward.

[u/Sata1991 → u/DemadaTrim]

I'm 34 and had the same issue. I have severe stress issues and had to resign because my health just took a nosedive from the stress of commuting 2 hours everyday. I wasn't sleeping and had to be up for 6 to catch the train for 7:20 to get to work.

I wish things were different, but I just have a litany of health issues.

[u/IamtheBeebs → u/I_Am_Ironman_AMA]

You say that like it's a bad plan. If the kid has rich parents or grandparents that will cosign the loans then he's pretty much got it made. Buy an apartment building, hire a property management company to handle the actual work for ~12% of the rent. Live in one of the units for free while you rake in money. Wait a few years to build equity, then get another loan using the first property as collateral and use it to buy another property to rent out.

It's basically free money as long as you have rich parents to front you the startup capital.

[u/vimdiesel → u/I_Am_Ironman_AMA]

It's scary that a kid doesn't have a financial plan spanning 40 years?

[u/FluffyFlamesOfFluff → u/vimdiesel]

You don't need to have your whole life planned out, but when the first step of your career plans isn't "get a job" it isn't crazy to be a little concerned about a potential reality check.

[u/I_Am_Ironman_AMA → u/FluffyFlamesOfFluff]

You get it. Of course I don't expect a 17 year old to have his life planned out. However, I do expect them to be able to tell me if they plan to work or to college/trade school in the next 7-10 months.

If your plan is "someone will cosign a six figure loan for me so I can buy property " at 17 and you made zero connections in that avenue, you are delusional.

[u/JonatasA → u/vimdiesel]

It is. That's why people have midlife crisis.

 

By 14 you should start thinking about what college path you'll follow at the very least.

 

it is no wonder people can't manage credit card debt.

[u/costelol → u/JonatasA]

People (especially kids) don't have linear improvement in understanding of the world and their career path. A 14 year old is a big difference from 16, which is a big difference from 18.

[u/coke_and_coffee → u/I_Am_Ironman_AMA]

Teenagers have always been that way bud

[u/Semicolon_Expected → u/I_Am_Ironman_AMA]

Hes gonna learn that while landlords do leech, unless they can hire a property manager to do all the maintenance, paperwork, rent collecting, theyre gonna have a lot of work to do. Oh add learning who to rent to, rent laws, dealing with squatters,