Personal technology
Economists found signs of a large and causal relationship between iPhones and fertility in AT&T exclusive period data.
If your phone is too stressful, your sex life won’t be. American birth rates have been declining for nearly two decades, and researchers believe they’ve identified a new culprit: the iPhone.
That’s right: The National Bureau of Economic Research examines AT&T mobile broadband coverage from the 2007 introduction of the iPhone until the company lost carrier exclusivity in 2011. By comparing birth rates across counties and controlling for confounding factors, the authors concluded that iPhone access reduced births, particularly among young women.
Caitlin Myers, a Middlebury College economics professor and NBER researcher, and Ezekiel Hooper, a Middlebury graduate, wrote in their paper that iPhone access led to a significant decline in birth rates among age groups. The authors found that in counties with iPhone access through AT&T, women ages 15-19 experienced an 8 percent decline in birth rates during the study period, while 20-24-year-olds experienced a 6.6 percent decline. Older age groups also showed “statistically significant but small declines”. Myers argues that the findings suggest more than a simple correlation.
“It’s undeniable that births have declined rapidly in places with AT&T coverage,” Myers said. Register In an email. “As a scientist, I hate to say causation has been ‘proved’ … but I will say that we have identified a compelling natural experiment that strongly points to a large and causal relationship between iPhones and fertility.”
Compared to counties with dominant Verizon and Sprint coverage, it began receiving Android devices in 2009, which did not affect the fertility associated with the launch of the iPhone. Myers told us they’ve seen some evidence that those areas of control began to show some similar declines as Android phones became more widely available, but small sample sizes and limited data make those findings somewhat imprecise.
“Taken together, the spread of the iPhone deepened the decline in births among women under 30, while suppressing the increase in births among older women,” the study explains, adding that the iPhone’s rollout may account for a 52 percent decline in general U.S. fertility rates over the period. Again, controlling for income, race, education level, and other factors did not eliminate the iDecline in birth rates.
How the iPhone Killed Sex
Writing on LinkedIn, Hooper said the people he talks to about the paper are completely unsurprised.
“Some counties got a working iPhone; nearby ones didn’t,” Hooper noted. “We’re seeing teenage and young adult births drop off so fast where the iPhone is working. And are counties stuck with Verizon? No effect. It’s hard to explain that time with anything other than the iPhone.”
The study didn’t include any data on why the introduction of the iPhone caused the birth rate to drop, but Myers and Hooper point to other research to suggest three possibilities — and a bit of common sense. First, smartphones are a substitute for in-person interactions, meaning people are less physically close and thus less likely to have sex. Couple that with one of the other factors they identified — instant, easy access to online porn — and people who stay at home are more likely to take care of business themselves instead of going out to socialize. Third, the iPhone gave people easy access to information about contraception and abortion access, so even those who chose not to leave home were less likely to have a child they didn’t want.
“The iPhone is an ever-available substitute for face-to-face; its social media apps are designed to sustain attention; both features displace peer time that creates sexual encounters,” the pair wrote.
Then again, iPhone owners still get more actions than Android users, at least according to a 16-year-old OkCupid study, so Apple lovers can at least count themselves lucky.
“We are not suggesting that the iPhone is solely to blame for the post-2007 decline,” the two conclude in their article. Recent research looking at the effects of connected technology on fertility rates has found that while the iPhone is the canary in the coal mine, internet connectivity, social media and ubiquitous pornography still have an effect.
The fertility decline that began in 2007 has worried not just the odd millionaire but the world, and Myers and Hooper conclude their article by looking at government programs in various countries that offer economic incentives to encourage their citizens to have children. Those programs, they say, target the wrong issues, even if the cost of raising a child is too high for many.
“Our estimates indicate that the introduction of the modern smartphone played a substantial role in the decline in US births,” the article concludes. If they’re right, cash incentives and other economic relief won’t necessarily change things.
“Policy instruments that governments have paid huge sums of money for… by themselves, do not address the behavioral change that our estimates suggest are working,” the pair wrote.
As with many social problems of the modern age, the solution may be best solved by people putting down their damn phones and ditching Facetime for face-to-face meetings. ®
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