“Is the IPhone birth control?” asks a new scientific paper that considers trends in American births between 2007 and 2011.
“The U.S. general fertility rate has fallen by 22% since 2007, a sustained decline not readily explained by economic conditions, contraceptive use, housing or childcare costs, or other commonly cited factors. We assess the potential role of a different shock: the diffusion of the smartphone,” the study’s abstract reads.
The methodology of the paper is interesting: between 2007 and 2011, IPhones—the first true “smartphones”—were only available on one carrier in the US, AT&T. The researchers compared counties that had near-universal AT&T coverage to those that had little or none.
A clear pattern emerged.
Access to the iPhone correlated with reductions in births by 4.5%–8.0% at ages 15–19 and by 3.2%–6.6% at ages 20–24.
There were also statistically significant but smaller declines among older women.
Although the researchers stress that IPhones are unlikely to be the sole cause, they say the new gadgets nevertheless “played a sizeable role” in the decline in US births.
“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,” they concluded.
The new study corroborates previous research on global trends in smartphone uptake and use, including a study published in May by University of Cincinnati economists Nathan Hudson and Hernan Moscoso Boedo.
Hudson and Boedo took World Bank data measuring smartphone penetration and teenage fertility rates in 128 countries.
They found the decline in birth rates accelerated once smartphones became widely available. This was found across countries “with fundamentally different health care, welfare, economic, and cultural environments.”
The economists concluded that this represents “a common global technology shock.”
Yesterday, Alex Jones Lives reported that White students now comprise less than half of all Americans at school, from nursery through to graduate study, according to US census data.
Enrolment of white students—classified as non-Latino and non-mixed-race—fell from 46.7 million in 2000 to 36.6 million in 2024.
That means white students are now just 48.8% of all Americans in public, private and homeschool systems.
Latino enrolment, by contrast, grew from 10.2 million to 18.4 million over the same period
Latinos are now 24.4% of all students.
The demographic shift is most pronounced among nursery and K-12 segments, where white non-Hispanic children are just 47% of nursery and kindergarten students and 48% of elementary and high-school students.
Higher education is the sole segment where white students remain the majority, though only just—51%.
Hispanic enrolment in college remains significantly lower than white enrolment—37.3% versus 53.9%.
In addition to the effects of mass immigration, Hispanics have had the highest birth rate in the US for some time. The 2022-2024 average was 64.3 for Hispanics, compared to 51.4 for whites.
In 2024, white births fell below 50%—49.6%—with all other groups combined at 50.4%.
One Response
If usa inc. wants more births just rewind back to the baby boom era.and mimic it. From their food,economy,music,schooling,tech,etc etc.