Smartphones are to blame for declining birth rates, as studies highlight the iPhone’s role
Source: Digital Trends
The timing has long raised questions. Birth rates in the US and dozens of other countries began falling in 2007, the same year Apple put the first iPhone on sale. Two new academic papers, highlighted by The New York Times, now argue that the overlap is not a coincidence.
What the research found
Economist Caitlin Myers and her student Ezekiel Hooper from Middlebury College built their case around a structural quirk: the original iPhone only worked on AT&T‘s network. That gave them a natural experiment. Counties with strong AT&T coverage got early smartphone access, while counties without it largely did not.
a boy using iPhone
Ivan Prokhorov / Unsplash
Comparing fertility data across those two groups, the researchers concluded that iPhone access drove as much as half of the US birth rate decline between 2007 and 2011, with the strongest effect in the 15-to-24 age group. As for the reason behind the drop, the researchers point to a shift away from in-person socializing, greater access to pornography, and better awareness of contraception and abortion options as possible explanations.
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