Researchers pin blame for declining birth rates on smartphones
The use of smartphones may well play a role in the worldwide decline in birth rates. Women are having children less and less often. Economic reasons do not sufficiently explain this.
Smartphones go hand in hand with fewer social contacts, more consumption of pornography, less sexual intercourse and greater access to information about contraception. The effect of the smartphone on the birth rate is more than mere correlation, say economists Caitlin Myers and Ezekiel Hooper of Middlebury College in Vermont, although it does not explain the whole story.
They define the start of the era of modern smartphones as the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. On the basis of extensive analyses of the years 2007-2011, they conclude that the spread of the iPhone, depending on the calculation method used, accounts for between a third and slightly more than half of the decline in the birth rate in the United States.
The limitation to the period up to 2011 is because the iPhone had an exceptional position and, up to 2011, could only be used in parts of the US. Android smartphones were scarce at that time and, insofar as they were available, initially only in virtually the same coverage area.
This makes it possible to compare developments between areas with and without smartphones, broken down across the more than 3,000 counties of the United States.
In 2024, the birth rate among American teenagers (15-19 years) was already about 70% lower than in 2007. Among women aged 20-24, the decrease was 47%.
Among older mothers the decline is smaller; from the age of 35 onwards, more babies are even being born. However, this carries less weight, because mothers of that age are relatively rare. Overall, the decline amounts to 22%.
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