As governments around the world struggle with ways to reverse plunging birth rates, new U.S. studies suggest they have ignored a key culprit – the smartphone.
“Is the iPhone Birth Control?” asked a paper published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, delving into why U.S. fertility rates have fallen by 22 percent since 2007.
For a while, experts linked the decline to the recession that struck in 2008 when the global financial system nearly imploded, driving millions of people into hardship. But when the economy picked up, a rebound in births never came.
Myriad other reasons have been posited, such as increased use of contraception, more female education, and growing housing or childcare costs. However, no clear cause has been established.
eat hot chip
Remember kids, if you flunk all the hard science courses, there’s always epidemiology.
When the economy rebounded?
For who did the economy rebound?
Re-do the study and check it against people’s disposable income levels. I’d be willing to bet the “birth bracket” moved to a higher income level thanks to inflation, housing, and food costs among others. Not the smart phone’s fault, it’s an economic problem. The study looked at poverty rates, but government defined poverty rates aren’t the same as the economic hopelessness felt by many even in the middle class.
My n=1 says yes.
The certain dopamine hit from phone use tends to rival an uncertain good shag possibility. Thus, phubbing wins.
It’s not about shagging rates but about birth rates. You don’t have to shag all the time to have kids.
More likely people don’t have kids because they want to spend more time doing fun things. Like watching Netflix.
Probably just as well.
So the smartphone was good for something afterall.
Yeah. It’s not making folks infertile. If you want to have kids, you can still make the time to do that. Reducing accidental pregnancy is entirely a win in my book.
As with all “is phone bad?” articles, is it phone or is it addictive recommendation algorithms on media sites
Fire is a pretty useful tool until it’s being used for arson
The problem is the infinite growth required to sustain capitalism.
This 100%. Phones are not the problem. Technology is not the problem. Addictive engagement algorithms are the problem.
Also if you are worried about the lower birth rate, maybe you should take a look at the fact that it’s fucking unaffordable to live alone let alone support a child. Raise the minimum wage, bring all other wages up with it, then let’s talk about population.
Although personally I think fewer humans is not necessarily a bad thing right now
We tried prohibition for alcohol. Didn’t work.
We’ve had more luck using social pressure and laws short of outright prohibition for tobacco. This might work for phones, too. But, we can’t even get most elementary schools to ban phones in the classroom.
Ultimately, addiction hurts the addicted, and not everyone becomes addicted, so blaming the supply is pointless.
Education and natural social pressure almost killed tobacco entirely (until big tobacco invested millions upon millions to push the “vaping” trend).
Prohibiton… of alcohol caused riots and created an underground market that enriched the Kennedys. of drugs led to mass imprisonment and made the drug crises a part of daily life. (Granted, that was largely the intent of the War on Drugs, but I digress).
No, there was not a natural progression. In the US there were major campaigns ran that started around 1999. The first efforts started in Mississippi, and I knew someone in college that worked on the campaign. It was seen as a money grab internally, they didn’t care at all about anyone’s health.
But then look at other countries. Smoking is just as popular as ever in China and many SE Asian countries today. Because they did not get the same propaganda machine.
Also, big tobacco hates vaping. Phillip Morris and RJ Reynolds have pushed back hard against it because it has hurt their duopoly powers
