alt Hacker NewsThe reason we have declining birth rates is phones.
It's not the economy. People have overwhelmingly been historically poor. Our ancestors ate rotting and festering meat and they had plenty of kids. Your great great grandparents went through some shit. HN community demographics are the exception to the rule.
The problem is every man and woman is sucked into a phone. They're never bored. There's no need to plan for long term fulfillment in another person. Always just more dopamine. Settling down isn't good because we're trained on short form gratification loops.
The spy devices enforce conformance too. Nobody takes risks and parties. Looking foolish will be shared and shamed. People get sucked into these closed off hyper critical portals where everyone sees a highlight reel, questions themselves, and adapts to the performance culture status quo.
This is worse than either Brave New World or 1984.
It's an almost fitting handoff that our species goes into decline as the robots begin to take over. Our species can't be just scaffolding right? We're kind of doing our best to prove that we are.
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> The reason we have declining birth rates is phones
US Live births per 1000 people from Macrotrends:
* 1960 - 22.70
* 1970 - 16.83
* 1980 - 14.99
* 1990 - 15.57
* 2000 - 14.18
* 2010 - 13.31
* 2020 - 11.99
* 2026 - 11.98
In the 30 years 1960 - 1990 which predate widespread adoption of mobile phones, we see a drop of ~7 live births per 1000 people.
In the 35 years since then (during which mobile phones have become ubiquitous) it has dropped by a further 3.5 live births per 1000 which is half the prior reduction.
If we look at US fertility rates the situation is even more dramatic. Births per woman:
* 1960 - 3.44
* 1970 - 2.34
* 1980 - 1.79
* 1990 - 1.96
* 2000 - 2.01
* 2010 - 1.98
* 2020 - 1.78
* 2026 - 1.79
The 30 years from 1960-1990 see a drop of almost 1.5 vs. a drop of about 0.2 in the 35 years since.
All of which is to say that the trend for declining birth rates predates mobile phone adoption, the biggest declines came prior to mobile phones being in widespread use. I've not researched the matter but my understanding is the primary drives in declining birth-rates are A) widespread availability of reliable birth control (the pill) and B)population wealth increases which tend to correlate quite strongly with the number of children a person has.
I don't discount phones having at least some impact, but seems highly unlikely that it's 'the' reason.
live births - https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni... fertility rate - https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni...
Trained on short form gratification loops? Just the opposite. They're the path of least resistance. It was thermodynamically inevitable that short form content would dominate.
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Right it has nothing to do with pollution or endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the environment. Yeah its definitely phones.
Your great great grandparents didn't effectively get fined for having each child. It was quite the opposite.
You make some really good points, but I feel they are a result of a greed-pilled, mean-spirited and individualistic-to-the-point-of-self-harm culture we're all sadly living under rather than the underlying cause.
Ive read quite a bit, including one of my favorite articles, "It's probably the phones": https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/honestly-its-probably-the-phon...
But then you kind of dove into the deepend there. Spy devices, 1984, etc. I think a more tempered approach is useful here