The Erection Epidemic

The Erection Epidemic

I think we’re on the edge of something. I’ve started calling it ‘The Erection Epidemic’. I don’t say that lightly. It’s just what I keep seeing, day after day, as more and more men come to me with the same struggle.

I’m a men’s sex coach. I work with guys dealing with performance anxiety, and by far the most common thing sitting underneath that anxiety is erectile dysfunction, or ED.

Now, ED itself isn’t new. Men have been dealing with it, and with the anxiety that comes with it, forever. But what’s genuinely concerning is who’s dealing with it now. Young, healthy men. The group of men you’d least expect.

A NYC urologist put it bluntly recently: ‘we’re heading for an ED epidemic’. He’s now seeing young guys who don’t even respond to ED medication anymore, and he’s calling it an early warning sign of something much bigger coming down the line.

Some level of ED as you get older has always been part of the deal. A man in his 50s or 60s not getting the same reliable, rock-hard erections he had at 25? Nobody’s shocked about that. But what’s actually happening now is that ED has quickly stopped being an ‘older man’s problem’. Some clinics have seen the number of under-40 patients walking through their doors for ED triple in just five years. Triple! One US practice has reported a 31-fold jump in patients aged 14 to 21 coming in with the same issue. In the UK, roughly 1 in 3 men under 40 now say they experience it.

What used to be reserved for the bedrooms of aging men has become an incredibly common issue for our young men.

This is a complicated topic, but here’s what I can say with real confidence: the majority of these guys aren’t dealing with some underlying medical condition. A lot of them are active. They don’t drink much, don’t smoke, eat well, train regularly. On paper, they’re the picture of health.

So what’s actually going on?

I think it’s pressure. Stress, pressure, and anxiety, all stacked up by a culture that’s obsessed with achievement, performance, conquest, and acquisition, and that obsession doesn’t stop at the bedroom door.

I think a lot of these young men are carrying such a heavy, invisible weight with a need to ‘perform’ in bed that the second they get into an intimate situation, they freeze up under the pressure to be instantly hard, ready to go, able to hold it, and able to go for ages, none of which is realistic, or honestly - even the point. There’s actually some solid backing behind this: doctors who specialise in men’s sexual health consistently say that when young guys come in with ED, it’s overwhelmingly down to psychological causes rather than physical ones, while for older men it tends to flip the other way. Roughly a quarter of men are thought to be affected by performance-anxiety-driven ED specifically. It’s a real, well-documented pattern, not just something coaches like me are noticing anecdotally.

Has porn played a part in this? Almost certainly, yes. Its sheer availability has quietly reshaped what a lot of men think they’re supposed to be doing, and how they’re supposed to look and perform, in the bedroom. Interestingly though, the actual research on this is less straighforward than people assume. It’s not simply ‘porn causes ED’ in some direct, mechanical way. It looks more like porn feeds into the psychological side, insecurity about your own body, unrealistic comparisons, performance pressure, and that’s what ends up getting in the way, not the porn itself acting on the body directly. Either way, the timing lines up: rates of psychogenic ED in men under 40 have climbed sharply over the exact period porn access exploded.

But I think it goes deeper than porn too.

I think men are culturally wired, from a young age, to chase conquest and achievement. To impress other men. To be ‘the best’ a woman’s ever had. The male ego is a genuinely fragile thing, and there’s arguably no more exposed place for that ego to sit than in the bedroom.

The other half of this is that men still don’t really have anywhere to talk about it. There’s so much shame wrapped up in admitting you’re struggling in bed. It can feel like social suicide, like you’re confessing to some kind of failure, so most men just carry it alone and never say a word to anyone.

So what’s the actual fix?

Taking the pressure off. Dropping the performance expectations. Having an actual safe space to talk about this stuff without being judged for it. Understanding how your own body genuinely works, learning to communicate with a partner, and rewriting the stories and beliefs you’ve been carrying around, often since you were a teenager.

As part of this process, I also recommend SVAKOM products to some of my clients as tools for exploring pleasure and reconnecting with their bodies. They can also be a useful way to explore new sensations and take some of the pressure out of traditional sexual expectations. Sometimes, simply giving yourself permission to slow down, experiment, and discover what actually feels good can be an important part of rebuilding confidence.

The one I recommend most is the Sam Neo 2 Pro.

If you’d like to try them, you can use my code GEAR35 on the SVAKOM website for 35% off any product.

I believe any man dealing with ED can work through it with the right support. That’s exactly what I’m here for. These guys are stuck in a loop, and my job is to help them find a way out of it.