When smartphones started getting popular, you’d sometimes hear people worry that they would cause a fertility crisis by somehow shriveling up our reproductive organs.
Well, it turns out those concerns were valid, just not for the reasons people thought.
Driving the news: A new study in the National Bureau of Economic Research linked the drop in U.S. birth rates, which began in 2007, to the release of the iPhone, which also happened in 2007. The hypothesized causation was that Apple’s smartphone led to “reduced in-person interactions, increasing pornography use, and [reduced] sexual frequency.”
It’s the second paper in just over a month linking smartphones with fewer births; the other looked at the causal effects of broadband and 4G coverage on teen fertility.
Zoom in: The study used a (quite ingenious) method, comparing birth rates in U.S. counties predominantly covered by AT&T — which between June 2007 and February 2011 was the only network that serviced iPhones — with those where the carrier had little-to-no presence.
The results imply that iPhones played a major role in lowering birth rates in women aged 15 to 44, and particularly in women aged 15 to 24. When scaled up, the study estimated the iPhone accounted for 33–52% of the decline in general fertility rates.
Why it matters: The fertility drop is a global issue, with the average number of children born to each woman falling below the “replacement rate” in more than two-thirds of countries. This means an aging population and fewer new world citizens to keep things running in the future.
Canada is no exception — in 2023, it officially became an “ultra-low fertility” country, with the fertility rate hitting another record low the following year.
Our take: Smartphones are one thread in a web of reasons — from economic stress to increased contraceptive access — for why there are fewer babies. They may be, however, the bleakest cause: people losing the ability to form actual, real-life relationships.—QH
