> I’ve been wondering recently what impact banning social media would have on birth rates. I’m confident it would be positive
The obsession with their birth rates is one of the creepy reasons why young people don't want to go out.
The obsession with their birth rates is one of the creepy reasons why young people don't want to go out.
I'm a bit confused here, as someone who doesn't go out and never did. Do young people get accosted about generational birth rates if they go out?
But I do think this is overstated. I have a small number of children and the main reason that we don't have more is that its incredibly expensive over the course of a lifetime to raise a child who isn't going to be some wage slave somewhere or worse, end up in poverty and treated like shit by the world. If our society was genuinely dedicated to allowing a slower pace of life and ensuring the unconditional dignity of human beings, we'd probably have more kids, but having more now feels like pitching them into the meat grinder.
It's not really a 'vision' and more like the end of humanity.
Just need to re-evaluate things once we hit post-scarcity.
In the past, women who didn't really want children didn't have a great deal of choice, particularly if they wanted to follow any kind of socially acceptable life. It was considered a failure to many if they didn't get a husband and children.
Therefore there was no particular evolutionary pressure to select for women who actually had a strong biological urge to have children.
But there is now, so after a few generations you end up with mostly those women having children, that genetically passed on desire becomes more prominent, and birth rates increase again. Until overpopulation becomes a new version of the problem people thought it would be previously.
>Therefore there was no particular evolutionary pressure to select for women who actually had a strong biological urge to have children.
It is possible to that a biological disposition to have children sufficient to outweigh other factors do not emerge in a sufficient timespan.
Society has a lot of feedback systems in place which make a total collapse sort of unusual. A slow down of technological progress while society re-allocates labor towards other ends seems like a much more reasonable outcome.
As a mid 30s millennial, it sure did feel weird back in my early 20s when older people from my rural hometown asked why I hadn’t found someone to marry and started a family yet. I had yet to even figure out who I was and how to be responsible, upstanding adult but somehow I’m supposed to take on a partner and N children too?! How does that make any sense? The chances of it ending in disaster of one sort or another are just too high, and that was obvious to me even in the midst of the naivety of a freshly minted adult.
Flash forward to today, and yes I’d like to do those things but I’m now in so much better of a position to do so that it’s difficult to even express. I’m glad I didn’t succumb to the pressure.
I’m sure that there are individuals who have all that sorted before their mid-20s, but that’s anything but a rule and nobody should feel pressured to make the leap at that age.
For one, the question was merely whether we'd observe an increased birth rate, not whether that is a reason to pass such a law.
Secondly, you're the one who's bringing up coercion. You can both not be on social media and not have kids. It's still your decision.
The reason for it might not have been made explicit but we both understand what they were driving at and why they weren't "merely" asking the question of what effect a social media ban might have on chocolate sales or something equally arbitrary.
But the assertion was not that young people have a 'clear preference' not to have children, it was that they just have a clear preference to engage in a behaviour that, as a side-effect, lowers birth rates.
> we both understand
I'm assuming that you're not doing this intentionally, but by asserting that I "understand" the commenter is trying to 'coerce [me] into having a more positive "positive" birth rate', a notion that I still disagree with, you're suggesting that I'm being intentionally obtuse. Please don't do that.
No, and the comment indeed ignored the very visibly growing "child free" movement popular with the younger generations in a way that framed it as unintentional.
> it was that they just have a clear preference to engage in a behaviour that, as a side-effect, lowers birth rates.
I understood this as well but if we're going to be picky about what was actually said then your use of "just" is unfair here. They actually didn't go one way or the other in it being coincidental or intentional.
> by asserting that I "understand" the commenter is trying to 'coerce [me] ...
I haven't implied this. I asserted that you understood that singling out the effect on birth rates over the effect on chocolate sales wasn't done arbitrarily. Did you understand that? Framing it as "just asking questions" obscures the obvious socio-political undertones and feels dishonest.
Not really. There are still young people who don't intentionally choose not to have children. Their birth rates might or might not increase without social media.
> your use of "just" is unfair here.
Fair enough, I'll concede that.
> I asserted that you understood that singling out the effect on birth rates over the effect on chocolate sales wasn't done arbitrarily.
Because birth rates are much more relevant to the topic at hand than chocolate sales, no? More loneliness almost necessarily translates into lower birth rates while you can eat chocolate alone or with others.