Terrifying Aussie male sex trend that is on the rise

Young Australian men are increasingly doing one thing in the bedroom that has left women “distraught” and experts “concerned”.

OPINION

About 14,000 years ago a person, I’m guessing a bloke, crouched in a cave in what is now the La Marche area of France and did something that approximately 59,868,695 boys and men have done in the millennia – scribbled some naughty nudes on a wall.

As long as humans have been humans, and even before we had truly shed our monkeying, tree-swinging past, porn, no matter how primitive, has been a decidedly human habit.

Boobs, penises, vulvas. Oooh, errr, bring me a new sharpened stick Gog.

But this is different. There is a seismic shift underfoot right now that is leaving Australian women “distraught” and “heartbroken”, which is seeing men abandon a good old fashioned tumble in the sheets for a new type of warped, potentially damaging, pleasure.

Meet the new generation – if not species – of younger men, dubbed by one leading thinker “Homo solo”. (Sadly ‘homo erectus’ had already been taken.)

These men are rejecting normal dating, sex and doing all the things dudes in their teens, 20s and 30s have been doing since the invention of the axe that could best be categorised as ‘getting their end away’.

There has been a more than 50 per cent increase in men 18-24-years-old not having sex since about the turn of the millennium.

Today, about 63 per cent of men under 30 are single – while only 34 per cent of women are, according to US research group Pew. (The argument is they are dating older men.)

The percentage of single men who are actually looking for relationships is dropping much faster than for women.

These kinds of figures signal “a larger breakdown in the social, romantic and sexual life” of young men, a recent report in the Washington-based publication The Hill has warned: “Men in their 20s are more likely than women in their 20s to be romantically uninvolved, sexually dormant, friendless and lonely.”

The percentage of single men who are actually looking for relationships is dropping much faster than for women. Picture: iStock

It’s a bit of a grim picture, all these men who are like the woolly mammoths of the mating game – frozen in ice and waiting for the world to find a way to hit the defrost button.

Because while all of these shifts were taking place, something else started happening in 2016 Brit Tim Stokely came up with the idea for OnlyFans, used a £10,000 (A$20,900) loan from his dad to change the lives of what are now more than 300 million, mostly male, users. In January 2024 alone, the platform was visited more than one billion times – and about 22.4 million times by Australian men, based on averages.

When I asked one Australian man in his early 30s about OnlyFans, he laughed.

“I’m the only guy in the world who doesn’t use it,” he said. “Men are useless. Everyone f**king does it.”

Let’s be clear – this goes far beyond blokes enjoying a quiet moment with a racy nude – this is about a degree of emotional and psychological dependence and compulsion that is nothing short of scary, with some men having what they feel are ‘real’ relationships via OnlyFans rather than human variety.

Look into the research and read accounts from those on the frontlines, users, women and OnlyFans content creators, and it seems like a self-perpetuating downward spiral – young men are lonely so they use OnlyFans to fill an emotional void in their lives, only to become hooked, which is leaving them unable or unwilling to seek out the real thing, which makes them lonelier and more disconnected, so they rely on OnlyFans even more.

It goes beyond looking at racy nudes. Picture: iStock

One academic article from 2021 flagged one possible contributing factor here – the kids aren’t drinking as much and therefore have a lower propensity to have casual sex.

The same research also pointed to increased computer gaming and the fact the younger generation can’t afford to leave home as making things even worse.

Do even the laziest of online searches and you will find rehab facilities in NSW, Victoria and Queensland already offering treatment specifically for OnlyFans users.

‘Porn addiction’ is to what appears to be going on now with OnlyFans as to what Jessica Simpson was to the music industry – theoretically connected but a pale shadow of the thing.

Australian men are not just turning to their phones and laptops to get their jollies but are also spending untold hours and hundreds of millions of dollars on the platform forming an emotional dependence on women they have never met.

Laura, an OnlyFans creator, recently told The Cut: “There’s a lot of lonely men out there.

They want to look at pictures of me, but they also want to have conversations that for whatever reason they’re not getting to have in their day-to-day lives.”

Young men, Fred Rabinowitz, a psychologist and professor at the University of Redlands in California who studies masculinity, has told The Hill are “getting a lot of their needs met without having to go out. And I think that’s starting to be a habit”.

New York University professor and leading thinker Scott Galloway has dubbed these sorts of men, “Homo solo”.

One theory is that the kids aren’t drinking as much and therefore have a lower propensity to have casual sex. Picture: iStock

Writing in March, he sounded the alarm: “We may be evolving a new species of asocial, asexual male: Homo solo.”Homo solo’s inability to develop romantic skills means he’s primarily a danger to himself, as he’s likely to be less happy, earn less money, and die sooner.

“Homo solo’s AI girlfriend never says no, is never tired, busy, or in a bad mood. In other words, she’s not human, and that obviates the risk of rejection and the other complexities of real-life relationships.”

Australian sex addiction therapist Tori McCarthy told The Cut that she is seeing a growing number of younger people “not knowing how to be in a relationship. They rely so heavily on these relationships with people who aren’t real.”

However, things don’t magically improve if men do finally leave their bedrooms to find nice girls to spend their nights aimlessly trawling the Netflix menu with.

The crushing consequences for Australian women are evident if you spend any time on the Beyond Blue Forum reading the desperate pleas of the wives and girlfriends on the

frontlines of OnlyFans addiction.

By the time you get to even page two of the posts you will be wondering if now might be a good time to join a nunnery. (A habit could be chic no?)

Take one Aussie woman who explained, “I met my current partner six months ago and it’s been almost too good to be true”. He said had stopped using the site when they began their relationship. He, of course, was lying.

Many Australian men are addicted to the app. Picture: iStock

“I was distraught when I found out – [he was] going on [women’s] pages every day he’s not with me since we’ve been together.”

When she confronted he admitted he was “struggling to stop watching it.

“I know that he is trying really hard but I just feel so heartbroken.”

Or take another woman: “Our life is virtually perfect …. I’ve since found he has an OnlyFans account and a secret email address.”

Again, another woman: “I’ve recently found out my boyfriend has [an] OnlyFans [account].

We have been together for 2.5 years and just bought our first house together … This has hurt me so much …. We both watch porn in our own time but him having OnlyFans and subscribing to girls we know has crossed a boundary.”

Let me be loud – megaphone-yelling-loud – this is not about blaming women. The arc of feminism and gender equality has only been an incredibly good thing – but there is something real going on that can’t be ignored.

Our phones are clearly doing something to our brains but so is the seemingly ever-snowballing cost-of-living crisis (a cost-of-loving crisis?) and our increasingly hermit-y tendencies.

Even if Kmart starts selling nuns habits, this is an issue that’s not going to magically solve itself.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as Terrifying Aussie male sex trend that is on the rise