Is the iPhone birth control? Causal evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 monopoly [pdf]
nber.org
nber.org
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.
On the other hand, as William James wrote, one of definite characteristics of a religious experience is seriousness. "All is not vanity."
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.
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.
Mistakes happen. Birth control is not 100% effective.. condoms break, women forget to take the pill, etc.
Of course it goes without saying you have a much higher chance of pregnancy if you're not using any form of birth control.
What was this social effect like, according to your memory?
Sometimes I hear today that kids without phones get ostracized because social circles have moved online. That wasn't a thing yet, I guess because it was an awkward period for messaging. AIM group chats were kinda popular before, but iPhones didn't support that well, and group texts either didn't exist (pre-MMS) or were really bad. Facebook was popular but wasn't really used for messaging.
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.
As was Sony cmd Z1.
And I think I still have a first-ever color screen phone by mitsubishi somehere.
(me walking down memory-lane...)
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.
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.
Sheesh, when the addictive scrolling was scrolling through your emails and BB Messenger messages...
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.
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”.
Now ~20% of all pregnancies in the US are 35+.
Overall, the diffusion of the iPhone explains 33–52% of the decline in
the general fertility rate among women aged 15–44.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.
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
That’s awfully presumptuous and gendered.
>buy a car
Assuming you don’t already have one and live somewhere where a car is needed. Plenty of parents with no cars or who had 1 and continue to live with 1.
>buy a house
Plenty of people do that with or without kids and plenty of parents rent.
>education
Plenty of people go to public school.
>healthcare
Valid but also people’s situations vary wildly here.
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 $1.2M. I don't see what you're arguing about. Do you have a better opportunity cost evaluator than S&P500?
The future markets of a shrinking world, with consumer and worker cohorts dwindling year after year, will be very different from the last 20. This is paradoxal reasoning. Your're counting on going childless, while the market remains the same, other people keep having children to grow the market. But if everybody else does the same it doesn't work. The mean investment probably will give negative returns, in a fast shrinking world.
What exactly are you planning to do with all that money anyway? Consume things?
Wrt. the original post i'd agree with GP - better information/education is probably the most powerful birth control.
As a lone elderly person you're likely to be scammed and lose a lot of that capital near the end, without close people that like and support you. Elders are incredibly vulnerable to financial scams, specially those enabled by technologic means they are not familiar with.
That is just utter BS. Yes, it is usally the elderly who got scammed, but saying that because you are elderly you are likely to be scammed is reverse causation. Especially if you manage to accumulate 1.2m$ in your life, you are financially literate and far less likely to fall into a money scam.
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.
Completely wrong. Not even plausible. You think every family is spending $67K per year, per baby, until they're 18? What?