The article argues that the post-war American baby boom left a surplus of marriageable women, which helped set off the sexual revolution; now falling birth rates have tilted the ratio back toward men, and young people's attitudes have tightened with it.
The author proposes that how permissive a society is about sex tracks the gender ratio in its dating market. In post-war America births rose year after year, couples averaged a two-year age gap, and that left more women than men of marriageable age, which in turn helped set off the sexual revolution.
Now it has flipped: there are more 20-year-old men than 18-year-old women. Young people are having less casual sex and thinking more about marriage, and on TikTok they post videos scolding adults canoodling in the park to think of the children.
The theory may not explain everything, but it is at least more interesting than blaming the phone.
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