Also should note that this is a working paper and not peer reviewed. Working papers are circulated to invite comments and discussion. Until some experts confirm their methodology I wouldn't take any of this for granted.
Seriously though, I'm gay so if I want I can literally go to a sex club and have sex, but scrolling is 100 times better than sex with a random person.
IMO the problem isn't that we choose scrolling over sex, but that having a smartphone makes independence easier, which removes opportunities and motivation to meet people. People talk to each other mainly when they need to solve practical problems. Remove practical problems and you remove social interaction.
I remember clearly that when my ex fixed my bike I had a strong impulse of being attracted to him. But realistically, when my bike is broken, I'd rather take it to a bike shop than ask someone for help and then do favors in exchange.
This study uses iPhone usage and birthrates at the county level.
The rural/urban distinction for counties has a strong correlation with wideband cellular data coverage, and that effect was even stronger in the early days of the iPhone when cellular data coverage was both weaker and more expensive.
Apple has better data. They know who has an iPhone, and they almost certainly know if they have kids. That info is probably available via ad brokers.
Here's an anecdote that today's kids are too young to have experienced, but their parents also weren't around for it. I was in middle school when the iPhone became popular. It was pretty sudden, so the social effect was obvious. Their parents probably bought them iPhones because they were addicted too, but it's different when you're in school. Since then have been hoping for a day when this gets undone.
I don't know if it's "birth control" but it will definitely let you know that "Plan B" is not considered "pregnancy-termination" it is still legal in all States.
i'm confused what this is in reference to, but yes, levonorgestrel emergency contraceptives can't be called pregnancy termination by even the most extreme definition because it works by delaying ovulation, does not impact implantation and does nothing during/post ovulation/ and 'conception'
I wouldn't have expected the era that brought Walkman phones, Cybershot phones, the T610/T650, the P910 and many others (Xperia!) to be called "crap", compared to....dunno, the Sony CMD-Z5...?
This is a pretty mind blowing result. Moreover, this was before the really addictive apps were available, like TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts. So it probably has gotten even worse since then.
That might only be part of the issue. There has been some "experiments" where people are asked if they'd prefer to give up their phone for some period of time, or go without sex in that same period. Women were more likely to prefer their phones over sex and other studies show that women generally spend more time on their phones than men does.
Study claims iPhone contributed to a significant decrease in the birth rate after its release in 2007, when AT&T was the only carrier for the phone, allowing researchers to “isolate an iPhone-specific channel” and compare birth rates in areas with a high AT&T customer base to competitors' areas:
“The diffusion of the iPhone explains 33-52 percent of the decline in the general fertility rate among women aged 15-44.”
Authors go on to muse that “as modern smartphones diffused, time spent with friends in person and sexual activity fell sharply alongside rising consumption of pornography, a possible substitute for partnered sex.”
Nothing to do, of course, with AT&T’s customer base at the time being urban, well-educated, and white, or that U.S. birth rate in the youngest groups had already been falling before 2007 with the trend continuing during study period.
The authors do address this issue, by reweighting their treatment and control counties on observable covariates. But I agree with you that this isn’t the causally watertight research design that economists usually strive for.
It might be worthwhile using local lightning strikes as an instrument for 3G coverage. Others have done this, but not for fertility afaik. But the lightning strike data costs about $1000.
In this modern world where highly effective birth control is cheap and straightforward, we really need to stop equating fertility rates with levels of sexual activity. You can have plenty of sex and not have a child; you can have very little sex and have a substantial number of children.
It's fascinating to me how personal choice never seems to enter into these discussions, even in relatively highly educated, first-world democracies. I actively chose to not have kids -- it was not an accidental by-product of iphones or any other proposed environmental factor.
The most absolutely infuriating thing about fertility rate discussions is the conclusion everyone draws of "obviously people aren't having enough sex".
I was sexually active for over 15 years before having exactly 1 child when I decided to.
The limiting factor in the number of children I have has at no point been the frequency of intercourse itself.
There's a subgenre of dystopian sci-fi where the premise is that reality in general is destined to be eclipsed by matrix-like hyper-realities, and that people will vastly prefer those and cede reality to whoever's left.
I guess the way this could work itself out is that if you prefer a hyper-reality, your genes do not pass on, and someone else's do, and within some number of generations we bounce back in response to evolutionary pressure.
I learned a fun fact in a recent interview of David Reich (by Dwarkesh):
> Every mutation that can occur does occur. There are eight billion people in the world. There are maybe 30 new mutations every generation, so that’s 240 billion new point mutations every generation. There are only three billion DNA bases in the genome, so every mutation that can occur does occur about 100 times every generation. We’re not mutation-limited anymore.
Interesting. It hadn't occurred to me that The Matrix would become more ubiquitous, but it seems there are plenty of mechanisms from avoiding that. People read novels 200 years ago, and i imagine that was a bit of blue pilling.
However, medical care isn't evenly distributed, neither is education, and there's tons of cultural differences as well. The mutations happen, but if the next Einstein or Ramanujan dies in a war-torn ghetto, did the mutation really happen?
yeah but that's no fun. Verve-102 and PCKS9 is a fascinating story in that area, of what we know and what we can do, but we need more money funding medical research in order to maker progress.
I don’t want to be flippantly dismissive but surely there was a certain other event in 2008 that caused many families to reconsider the financial wisdom of starting a family.
Even if you control for age and wealth, the people who used iPhones in 2008, i.e. tech hipsters, are obviously different in tangible ways from the people who didn't use iPhones in 2008. It's not possible to prove causality from that.
Are the tech hipsters disproportionately in the areas already covered by AT&T? It seems plausible, if Apple and AT&T were targeting similar demographics that Apple would choose AT&T as its first partner. But it's on the edge of weird correlations where the burden of proof starts to fall on the person disputing that the study is unbiased, rather than on the researchers to rule out every possible correlation.
Alternatively, maybe you are arguing that even if iPhones caused a decline in birth rate among tech hipsters, that doesn't transfer to the population at large. This is both less believable and less valuable as a criticism of the study: even if the result only holds in one demographic group it's still an interesting finding.
Or, the kind of people who bought iPhones in 2008 were a different subset of the population than those who didn’t and as such they have different opinions and preferences when it comes to family and kids?
With that said, I can also see that infinite entertainment and infinite information makes you deprioritize having children.
But it’s far from proof, this study. It’s more like “I found some numbers that support my already existing opinion, so let’s run with that”.
Maybe some people realized that they could wait a few years and still have kids later, and others didn't think about having kids purely though the lens of evolutionary biology.
nitpick about what you said: you don't wanna postpone that plan too much. At 40 you won't have the energy to keep up with the needs of the kid. You will hate your life and you'll make a ton of mistakes. I had them young, and my career and financial situation weren't affected at all.
Before political correctness hit this area, doctors' observations led to classifying any first pregnancy past 25yo as geriatric. Healthcare progresses in some areas, some (like DS) are rigid to socially defined trends.
Last century geriatric pregnancy was one term used for over 35s. It is no longer used, and 25 seems like it is social media bullshit. Apparently the term was created ~1960 for international usage because medical complications after that age were far more risky in the 50s.
What makes an iPhone better than Durex is that you can take it out of your pocket and everyone will envy you. In that sense, I think it's an envy-inducing contraceptive tool.
It is "birth control" but in sort of opposite way. People are now much better informed, thanks to internet and devices like iphone. They do not have to relly on state education (that wants more babies) and popular shows like Friends.
State founded school is not going to tell you it costs $1200000 to raise baby, or you have 50% chance it will be taken away.
It will also push stats made in lab controlled conditions, and gloss over unreliability of such medications in real life (like if you would skip a pill for a few days).
Failure rate of birth control in normal life is around 10% per year (if you drink, forget to take pill at very exact time, use antibiotics). So there would be about chance 50% to get unwanted baby over years. Well informed person will not make such mistake.
Edit: about the cost
I said the "cost is", not that they are "spending it". There is lost opportunity, lost salary, lost investments, inflation...
It is not 18, more like 24 years.
Let's do some some math, take $600 rent over 18 years = $129,600. With 5% annual rent increase $202k. If you would reinvest that rental income with 5% yearly return $304k!!!
Stay at home mum for 5 years, at $60k = $300k. If you invest that into retirement account when baby would go to school, for 12 years at 5% yearly return it is $538k
retire? Retiring only on Social Security is pretty tough, and $1.2M would provide like $4K/month income which on top of Social Security may allow for modest lifestyle in some low COL area.
Wrt. the original post i'd agree with GP - better information/education is probably the most powerful birth control.
If you don't have children to inherit your fortune to, you can retire with full exhaustion of capital - that will yield way more than 4k$/month. Plus, if you don't have children there is not much holding you in the US - you can look at 2nd world countries. I.e. That money buys you a good retirement lifestyle in Mexiko, Brazil, Argentina etc. Or Vietnam, Thailand etc. if you are more into asia.
Actually raising a child costs more than $1.2M - just $20K/year invested in S&P500 over the last 20 years would have grown to more than $1.2M. Or those $20K/year could be spend on the child. And $20K/year is pretty low.
I’d check that math - that’s 67k/yr, not 20k/yr. 1.2mill/18 years.
I’m a parent and yeah it’s expensive but not multiple mortgages expensive unless you’re choosing certain expenses like very costly private schools. I also don’t compare parenthood with investing in the S&P 500 as they are radically different undertakings, but that’s a different discussion entirely.
>I’d check that math - that’s 67k/yr, not 20k/yr. 1.2mill/18 years.
It is meaningless calculating cost by simple division when the endeavor takes 2 decades. Money today are different from money 20 years ago. S&P500 is pretty reasonable and well accepted device to calculate opportunity cost over such long timeframes.
I didn’t set these numbers, the other dude did then you backed it up even going so far as to lecture me about how 20k isn’t enough to raise a kid. I completely agree that this is meaningless, but I’m also not going to let 1.2mill suddenly equal 20k/yr raising a kid!
>going so far as to lecture me about how 20k isn’t enough to raise a kid.
i expressed my opinion. You may have different one. Expressing an opinion different than yours isn't "lecturing".
>I’m also not going to let 1.2mill suddenly equal 20k/yr raising a kid!
using S&P500 as the opportunity cost evaluator the 20k/yr results in even more than $1.2M. I don't see what you're arguing about. Do you have a better opportunity cost evaluator than S&P500?
People prefer scrolling to sex enough that using the iPhone explains up to half of the U.S. birth decline since 2011.
IMO the problem isn't that we choose scrolling over sex, but that having a smartphone makes independence easier, which removes opportunities and motivation to meet people. People talk to each other mainly when they need to solve practical problems. Remove practical problems and you remove social interaction.
I remember clearly that when my ex fixed my bike I had a strong impulse of being attracted to him. But realistically, when my bike is broken, I'd rather take it to a bike shop than ask someone for help and then do favors in exchange.
Apple has better data. They know who has an iPhone, and they almost certainly know if they have kids. That info is probably available via ad brokers.
https://blog.est.im/2026/stdin-09
ppl are now having better options than raising a baby.
It gets me beffudled people actually think addiction to the virtual crack of social media is a better option.
(me walking down memory-lane...)
As was Sony cmd Z1.
And I think I still have a first-ever color screen phone by mitsubishi somehere.
Surely there's an enormous amount of money behind it, but where's the ROI ?
If you are in the category that would sit and watch porn in the public, then you already wouldn't need birth control.
Study claims iPhone contributed to a significant decrease in the birth rate after its release in 2007, when AT&T was the only carrier for the phone, allowing researchers to “isolate an iPhone-specific channel” and compare birth rates in areas with a high AT&T customer base to competitors' areas:
“The diffusion of the iPhone explains 33-52 percent of the decline in the general fertility rate among women aged 15-44.”
Authors go on to muse that “as modern smartphones diffused, time spent with friends in person and sexual activity fell sharply alongside rising consumption of pornography, a possible substitute for partnered sex.”
Nothing to do, of course, with AT&T’s customer base at the time being urban, well-educated, and white, or that U.S. birth rate in the youngest groups had already been falling before 2007 with the trend continuing during study period.
It might be worthwhile using local lightning strikes as an instrument for 3G coverage. Others have done this, but not for fertility afaik. But the lightning strike data costs about $1000.
It's fascinating to me how personal choice never seems to enter into these discussions, even in relatively highly educated, first-world democracies. I actively chose to not have kids -- it was not an accidental by-product of iphones or any other proposed environmental factor.
The most absolutely infuriating thing about fertility rate discussions is the conclusion everyone draws of "obviously people aren't having enough sex".
I was sexually active for over 15 years before having exactly 1 child when I decided to.
The limiting factor in the number of children I have has at no point been the frequency of intercourse itself.
I guess the way this could work itself out is that if you prefer a hyper-reality, your genes do not pass on, and someone else's do, and within some number of generations we bounce back in response to evolutionary pressure.
I learned a fun fact in a recent interview of David Reich (by Dwarkesh):
> Every mutation that can occur does occur. There are eight billion people in the world. There are maybe 30 new mutations every generation, so that’s 240 billion new point mutations every generation. There are only three billion DNA bases in the genome, so every mutation that can occur does occur about 100 times every generation. We’re not mutation-limited anymore.
https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/david-reich-2
On the other hand, as William James wrote, one of definite characteristics of a religious experience is seriousness. "All is not vanity."
Since people using other carriers also experienced 2008, it's not that.
Alternatively, maybe you are arguing that even if iPhones caused a decline in birth rate among tech hipsters, that doesn't transfer to the population at large. This is both less believable and less valuable as a criticism of the study: even if the result only holds in one demographic group it's still an interesting finding.
With that said, I can also see that infinite entertainment and infinite information makes you deprioritize having children.
But it’s far from proof, this study. It’s more like “I found some numbers that support my already existing opinion, so let’s run with that”.
Or maybe the type of person that buys iPhones also spends too much on other items causing them to be over leveraged when a financial crash does occur.
Now ~20% of all pregnancies in the US are 35+.
State founded school is not going to tell you it costs $1200000 to raise baby, or you have 50% chance it will be taken away.
It will also push stats made in lab controlled conditions, and gloss over unreliability of such medications in real life (like if you would skip a pill for a few days).
Failure rate of birth control in normal life is around 10% per year (if you drink, forget to take pill at very exact time, use antibiotics). So there would be about chance 50% to get unwanted baby over years. Well informed person will not make such mistake.
Edit: about the cost
I said the "cost is", not that they are "spending it". There is lost opportunity, lost salary, lost investments, inflation...
It is not 18, more like 24 years.
Let's do some some math, take $600 rent over 18 years = $129,600. With 5% annual rent increase $202k. If you would reinvest that rental income with 5% yearly return $304k!!!
Stay at home mum for 5 years, at $60k = $300k. If you invest that into retirement account when baby would go to school, for 12 years at 5% yearly return it is $538k
Completely wrong. Not even plausible. You think every family is spending $67K per year, per baby, until they're 18? What?
What exactly are you planning to do with all that money anyway? Consume things?
Wrt. the original post i'd agree with GP - better information/education is probably the most powerful birth control.
Get all McKinsey and calculate a TCO of a baby from conception to end-of-uni. $1.2M is low-end even for eastern EU, it's more like twice that.
0-to-23. $100K/year. This what a baby costs.
Or the potential for end of life care.
And apparently grandkids are neat, but it's hard to have those without having kids. Not sure how to value that one.
I’m a parent and yeah it’s expensive but not multiple mortgages expensive unless you’re choosing certain expenses like very costly private schools. I also don’t compare parenthood with investing in the S&P 500 as they are radically different undertakings, but that’s a different discussion entirely.
It is meaningless calculating cost by simple division when the endeavor takes 2 decades. Money today are different from money 20 years ago. S&P500 is pretty reasonable and well accepted device to calculate opportunity cost over such long timeframes.
i expressed my opinion. You may have different one. Expressing an opinion different than yours isn't "lecturing".
>I’m also not going to let 1.2mill suddenly equal 20k/yr raising a kid!
using S&P500 as the opportunity cost evaluator the 20k/yr results in even more than $1.2M. I don't see what you're arguing about. Do you have a better opportunity cost evaluator than S&P500?