The modern technological age has influenced our psychosexual behavior in many profound ways. These influences have altered our perception of romantic partners and relationships to include various types of social illusions, shifting cultural dynamics, and mating strategies. Here we delve deep into human sexual psychology to uncover the effects new technologies have on our most ancient drives and desire for romantic partnership. To begin we transcend time, all the way back to the beginning, approximately 4 billion years ago to discover how these ancient drives were created and how they evolved over time.
What are psychosexual desires and how were they created?
Evolutionary theory suggests that we are essentially the descendents of much earlier molecular structures appearing about 4 billion years ago, configured in a manner that caused self replication. Random shifts and mutations brought on by environmental pressures altered these molecules over time creating different replicating species that competed for molecular building blocks needed for self replication. Over time, the species that were more efficient and effective at acquiring replicating materials, out competed their contemporaries.
As increasingly complex and adaptive molecules emerged, cellular structures began to form. Eventually these cellular structures would form mutually beneficial symbiotic relationships creating the first multicellular organisms. Natural selection favored primitive organisms with an imbalance of cellular structures causing species to develop with cellular clusters on one side. As these cellular clusters further evolved, they began reacting to certain environmental stimuli, light, vibrations, temperature, textures and other signs of molecular building blocks or food.
Over time, these organisms would continue to evolve, using stimuli to organize molecular and bodily responses relative to environmental pressures. As primitive nervous systems developed, feedback mechanisms allowed early brain-like structures to sense their own bodily response, developing primordial forms of emotion. This early version of self perception would develop to include perceptions of the environmental stimuli affecting bodily processes, eventually evolving into self awareness and consciousness.
As complexity within the organism continued to develop, so did our emotions, bodily responses, and responses towards the environment. These responses evolving to aid the replicator in it's quest to acquire environmental material, forming our sexual psychology and advanced mating strategies.
From here we fast forward past the dawning of man, occurring about 6 millions years ago, right up to the Agricultural Revolution which began about 10-12,000 years ago.
Traditional Romantic Relationships.
For 98% of our evolutionary history, humans lived in mostly egalitarian hunter gatherer societies. The agricultural revolution changed mindsets and brain dynamics emphasizing ownership and private property. This helped to usher in a new age amongst many agricultural societies, where women became seen as property, a sexual commodity and belonging to the homestead or farm they helped tend . These agrarian shifts further cemented our psychosexual strategies within the bedrock of male dominated Intrasexual competition.
Amongst the majority of agricultural societies, monogamous relationships became the established norm. Alternative sociological theory suggests the reason for this was due to the lack of available resources needed to care for multiple reproductive partners and families, along with the extra time and energy required to successfully mate guard multiple partners. It was simply a better reproductive strategy to focus on one partner and set children, rather than multiple. Alternative sexual strategies such as polygamy were typically only practiced by the wealthy and aristocracy.
As recently as the 1960s, nuclear families remained the established norm with just 13% of all households registered as single person occupied. However By 2022, single person occupied households would increase to 29% (Census.gov). So why are we experiencing this seemingly accelerated trend towards single living, and how has the technological age helped to propel this cultural shift?
Love and Illusion…
The brain is shaped by cultural influences within it's environment. Worldwide, between television and other connected devices, the average user spends about 7.5hrs/day consuming cultural stimuli. This continual influx of cultural information alters brain dynamics in profound ways causing us to perceive the world around us from a different perspectives.
As we consume social content from various media outlets, our brains create social illusions, manipulating cultural perceptions. Social illusions such as, the ideal partner, the ideal relationship, and idealistic alternative lifestyles, fed to us by algorithms which are designed to prey on our evolutionary biases, reshape what we perceive as the cultural norm.
When these social illusions begin to change our perceptions, causing us to normalize these idealistic versions of people, relationships, and lifestyles, romantic satisfaction within our more typical environments decline.
The Allure of the Outlier…
Throughout our evolutionary history, up until the digital age, humans competing for sexual access to potential mates were only compared to those within their immediate environments. This meant within even a larger tribe of 100 or so individuals, if you were one of the younger, available partners of reproductive age, there wouldn't be many individuals you would have to compete with in order to find a romantic partner, nor would you likely have many options.
While our modern social circles may still be similar in size and in some cases even smaller, the perception of these circles has been artificially distorted by the inclusion of Genetic Outliers and people from vastly different environments, such as celebrities and professional athletes, amongst other atypical success stories.
Due to our new global reach within the digital age, we find ourselves continuously face to face with these environmental Outliers and success stories. The nature of our brains causes us to constantly compare potential partners within our social sphere to the Outlier both consciously and nonconciously, making us more critical and less accepting of sexually available mates within our own immediate circles. This has ultimately led to diminished happiness and satisfaction within modern relationships.
A Reject and Discard Mentality.
In the age of dating apps and social media feeds, it has become all too easy to develop a swipe left “next” type of mentality. Such a mindset teaches us to devalue the individual, leading us to become more dismissive and apathetic towards one another with each swipe. This devaluing of the more personal aspects of the individual, including their rich lives, personality, struggles and accomplishments, causes us to develop an increasingly shallow perspective in our quest for romantic partnership.
Our list of preferences and romantic aversions have evolved into a type of red flag culture in which we expect the stars to align, failing to take inventory and appraisal of our own red flags. Romantic relationships often need to be forged and tested rather than simply found, having fallen in our laps. The truth is, we all exhibit red flags, and toxic behavior from time to time, and may even swipe past ourselves, as well as other suitable mats if given the chance.
It’s important to note that previous generations, who experienced much less social availability relative to current generations, largely enjoyed greater relationship satisfaction than many do today. They simply had more motivation to forge relationships and make them work, despite the difficulties, given the lack of available sexual partners and social technology.
The Struggles Behind The Facade. The Marital Effect.
Cultural influences have also had profound effects on people within long established relationships. Social media allows people to showcase their happy moments and romantic accomplishments, which is of course a benefit to the individual and their romantic relationships in general, giving us all something to strive for within our own romantic environments.
Although the negative side for content consumers is that we tend to fall into the mental trap of creating illusions based solely on what we see. This warps our view of romantic relationships into something based entirely on the best parts of the relationships of others.
Comparison of our own romantic relationships, and our propensity to underestimate the hardships of many insta and celebrity relationships, or simply observing couples with vastly different environments and challenges, often robs us of appreciation for our own situation. This ultimately makes our own struggles seem more personal, prominent and less universally shared, since we often do not see the struggles that many of these relationships endure.
How Tech Affects Neurobiological Love.
There are many different ways social technology affects our neuropsychology. From our desire to predict the next sequence in an unpredictable pattern, to the micro drips of dopamine and serotonin fluctuations that accompany our own social sharing, to the deeper and more complex ways it affects brain dynamics between the two hemispheres further altering our behavior.
So how do these neuropsychological effects influence our desire for romantic companionship?
Social technology affects the brains reward system, triggering addictive behavioral patterns. Fluctuations in neurochemistry create a reward seeking cycle utilizing similar brain regions associated with chemical and behavioral addictions. Overtime, as receptors and biochemical production are dulled, more and more stimulus is needed to achieve the same feeling.
Love and romantic pursuits work along these same neuro mechanism. If the brains reward system has been altered in a way that has caused our response to reward stimulus to atrophy, we may simply find ourselves less inclined to pursue romantic partners. Contributing to the cultural changes we are observe today.
The Rise of Feminine Intersexual Selection.
The use of technology as a vessel for cultural and social stimulus has led to a re-prioritization of feminine values over the masculine, shifting our cultural mating practices from an Intrasexual masculine based strategy by which males compete and win reproductive rights, to a more feminine based intersexual society where women collectively decide which traits they desire, selecting potential sexual partners accordingly.
This sociosexual shift occurs for a number of reasons. The push for equality has led to a more egalitarian society where women are no longer considered property but rather as equals, has taken much of the power men previously held within human sexual practices. Over time, this has been returning us to the more feminine based intersexual strategy.
Men and Women have essentially evolved along the same evolutionary path while balancing the species in a number of ways. Men have evolved with the ability and drive to produce as many offspring as available resources will allow for, while women have evolved to counter balance the masculine drive ensuring the selection and reproduction of the most resourceful and healthy mating prospects.
For millennia this balance has been shifted in favor of male reproductive strategies, evident by the 7 billion people on the planet. However now that human reproductive practices are shifting back towards the feminine, we are witnessing a counter balance occurring with the decline of populations in many industrialized societies and a decline in sexual relationships.
Socioeconomics and Psychosexual Behavior To be continued…
Technology also drives economic growth, and the availability of resources is often directly related to population growth and decline within a given species. We have seen this dynamic play out throughout history with population increases following the agricultural and industrial revolutions.
However this section deserves a whole other article entirely of its own. Stay tuned as I will be discussing how technology, socioeconomics and the availability of resources also influences our psychosexual behavior in subsequent articles.
So what do you think?
As a species, are our psychosexual desires and roles changing as society and culture evolve?
It often seems that cultural mating strategies which have been around for thousands of years, on through our grandparents generation, are shifting along with our perceived gender roles in society.
In the 1960s the average age of marriage was about 21-22 years of age for both men and women, as of 2021 this number has risen to 33-35 years of age. People are marrying later and later and in many cases, opting out of marriage all together in favor of a single household, divorce, or forming unmarried families. Birth rates are also in decline, down about 15% per 1000 women since 2007.
Of course social technology can't account for these shifts entirely on its own, so in the next article we will be discussing the impact Socio Economics has on our romantic lives. Social technology does however, play an undeniable role in our sexual relationships, influencing behavioral patterns in a number of profound ways. From the creation of mind bending social illusions, to the inclusion of social outliers within our day to day lives, to the shifts in mating strategies employed by men and women.
What's in store for humanity going forward, no one can accurately predict. However as a species we tend to gravitate towards what has become beneficially adaptive within our new environments, regardless of whether the changes have pleasurable effects. Ultimately these changes are compelled due to environmental shifts, as long as our environments remain the same, these trends are likely to continue, hopefully for the better.
I hope you enjoyed this article covering, what our psychosexual desires are, where they come from, and how new technologies directly affect our romantic satisfaction and behavior.
By,
Jesse (The Mad Philosopher)
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