The iPhone lowered the birth rate, new paper finds
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Add birth control to the list of things an iPhone can do: The introduction of Apple's smartphone in 2007 helped lower U.S. fertility rates, especially among teens and young adults, a new paper concludes.
Why it matters: Researchers and policymakers have been scrambling to pinpoint why exactly birth rates are falling in the U.S. and around the world.
- Smartphones and the rise of social media are hardly the sole factor — birth control access and economic concerns like child care and housing costs are also debated — but the paper offers some intriguing evidence that helps explain the overall trend.
The big picture: The fertility rate started falling in 2007, and initially economists believed this was due to the financial crisis, as people tend to have fewer babies in bad economic times.
The intrigue: But the economy rebounded after the 2008 recession — the birth rate did not.
Zoom in: The decline in births has been particularly steep for teenagers and young adults.
- Some researchers have hypothesized there's a correlation with the rise of social media and smartphones — after all, there's also been a documented decline in sex among teens, as well as an increase in anxiety and in social isolation.
How it works: Middlebury College economist Caitlin Myers went beyond those efforts by going back to 2007, when the iPhone launched, and finding some compelling data.
- Back then, Apple's new device was available only for phones on the AT&T network. The carrier held the exclusive rights until 2011.
- That offered an opportunity to compare areas of the country that had AT&T access with those without.
What they found: The birth rate started to plummet faster in counties with high levels of AT&T mobile broadband coverage.
- "For every age group, we see evidence that the iPhone depresses fertility," says Myers, who did the research with Ezekiel Hooper, who was an undergraduate at Middlebury when they began the work and is Myers' stepson.
- They had been talking for years around the dinner table about his generation's issues with loneliness, anxiety and depression, she says, and wanted an experiment to examine the issue.
Yes, but: They can't completely rule out the possibility that areas with AT&T differed in other ways that would make birth rates fall faster.
Zoom out: Smartphones changed the way people — especially young adults — spend their time. They're increasingly likely to be alone — or have interactions with friends happen online rather than in-person. You don't need a PhD to understand that would make it harder to get pregnant.
- "People just aren't forming the relationships that result in children," Myers says.
Reality check: The iPhone is not literally a birth control device, of course. "It's an example of the kinds of social influences that have led to the decline in birth rate," Phillip B. Levine, an economist at Wellesley College who studies fertility, told the New York Times.
- A separate recent research paper also finds a connection between the introduction of the smartphone and declining fertility worldwide.
Between the lines: The declining fertility rate is an economic concern: Fewer young people means fewer workers to support our rapidly growing population of seniors.
- And it's become a politically charged issue. Republicans especially have made it a focus.
- Policy solutions have included baby bonuses, tax credits or better child care and parental leave policies.
The bottom line: But this research suggests there's no easy fix here.
- Perhaps the solution is that everyone toss their phones into the sea? "I don't really see that happening," Myers says. "Regardless of what one economist in Vermont thinks about it."
