Apple introduced the iPhone to the world in 2007. That was the same year that birth rates around the world began to decline. The two developments may be related.
“If your sex life is dead, you can blame Steve Jobs,” Brandon Vigliarolo said at The Register. Two new studies suggest smartphones are responsible for the baby bust. One found the iPhone “caused as much as half of the fertility decline” from 2007 to 2011, said The New York Times. A second study of 128 countries found that teen pregnancies declined “once smartphones became a mass phenomenon.” It may be that people “began to socialize more on their phones and less in person,” or it could be the technology “made pornography more accessible.”
Experts suggested caution is needed. Smartphones are just one “example of the kinds of social influences” that may have reduced fertility, Wellesley College’s Phillip B. Levine said to the Times.
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‘Awkward, antisocial puppies’
Phones have “turned us into awkward, antisocial puppies who can’t handle eye contact,” Lauren Veldhuizen said at the National Review. The rise of smartphone technology has thus created a world where “fewer people date, and fewer babies are born.” Some might see the decline of teen pregnancies, in particular, as a positive development. But that would be true only if the decline were the result of an “increasing respect for the purpose of sex within the confines of marriage” instead of our increasing “inability to speak to one another.”
The media has glommed onto the new studies because of a collective mood of “total paranoia and doom about smartphones,” Elizabeth Nolan Brown said at Reason. The biggest plunges in the 2007-to-2011 study were among 15-to-24-year-old females, suggesting more girls and women are “avoiding unintended pregnancy at young ages.” That is not necessarily a bad thing. The study’s time frame might also simply reflect the impact of the Great Recession. The research should be greeted “with some skepticism.”
Smartphones “short-circuit the deep-seated human need to have your kids keep you company,” Noah Smith said at Noahpinion. We are choosing to “forsake each other’s company to stare eternally into a black mirror.”
‘No easy fix’
Maybe smartphones first tarnished dating, but “AI might finish the job,” Eric Levitz said at Vox. Streaming and social media have helped us isolate from each other, yet online platforms could not discuss “your career anxieties, favorite Civil War battle or debilitating fear of iguanas.” Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini and other artificial intelligence chatbots can. “Humanity may be scrolling its way out of existence.”
There is “no easy fix here,” said Axios. Politicians have proposed “baby bonuses, tax credits or better child care and parental leave policies” to solve the fertility crisis, all to no avail. “Perhaps the solution is that everyone toss their phones into the sea?”
