Oh no. Are you spending too much time on AF? Well maybe that's why you don't have any kids.
It rather seems to me that the reason people don't have more kids is because cost of living is on the rise, there are wars across the world, rise of xenophobia, and the gloomy future of the polluted unlivable world.
Quote:Smartphones broke dating. AI might finish the job.
Humanity may be scrolling its way out of existence.
The argument goes (partly) like this: As smartphone ownership skyrocketed globally during the 2010s, more and more young people tapped into a vast, omnipresent trove of personalized entertainment, which reduced their incentives to socialize in person. When you have virtually every movie, TV show, and pornography ever made at your fingertips, you no longer need parties for stimulation or diversion. And when you have an X or Facebook account, you can participate in a public conversation ā and experience communal recognition ā without ever leaving the comfort of your goon cave.
Yet this withdrawal from in-person socializing reduces young peopleās opportunities to meet romantic partners or develop social skills. Relationship formation falls as a result.
āThe digital revolution has played a signal role in both degrading socialization for young adults and dividing young adults from one another,ā Brad Wilcox, a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, told me.
And that revolution is only just beginning. After all, the tech sectorās quest to make social isolation more appealing did not end with the advent of the iPhone, Netflix, or TikTok.
Since 2022, more than 1 billion people have gained access to an infinitely patient conversation partner ā one who can speak knowledgeably about all of their interests and listen compassionately to all of their problems. Thanks to Claude and ChatGPT, hermits can not only enjoy perpetual stimulation without social contact but also forms of emotional support that had previously required an intimate friend, family member, lover, or licensed therapist.
And these are the worst versions of these products weāll ever see. Future iterations may take even more engaging forms; someday, Claude might be able to get it on.
This makes the āsmartphone theoryā one of the more important hypotheses of our time. If its narrative is correct ā and there is some compelling evidence in its favor ā then the fertility crisis is liable to deepen in the coming years. And AI might be replacing more than just our jobs.
In countries as varied as the United States, South Korea, Turkey, Tunisia, and Finland, young adults became less likely to have a romantic partner. And this ārelationship recessionā seems to have fueled the post-2010 drop in fertility. According to a 2025 study published in Nature, mothers in most high-income countries are having about as many children as they did decades ago. Yet fertility rates are falling nonetheless, due to a steep drop in the share of women who have any children at all.
The coupling collapse canāt be explained by a sudden expansion of womenās rights; it is happening even in deeply patriarchal societies like Saudi Arabia. Nor is it easily attributed to economic turmoil; rates of romantic partnership have fallen in both high-growth and low-growth nations, advanced economies and developing ones, countries rattled by the 2008 crisis and those largely unharmed by it.
Smartphones, on the other hand, were in the right places at the right times.
In country after country, the rise in singles ā and drop in birth rates ā coincided with the mass adoption of smartphones, according to an analysis from Burn-Murdoch, the journalist at the Financial Times.
Correlation isnāt causation. But thereās reason to think this timing isnāt coincidental.
In one recent study, economists from the University of Cincinnati examined how teen fertility changed in different American and British localities as they gained access to 4G mobile networks. They found that the arrival of high-speed internet consistently accelerated declines in adolescent birth rates and conceptions. Their explanation for this phenomenon is straightforward: When the center of adolescent life moves online, in-personal socializing declines ā and with it, opportunities for one thing to lead to another.
https://www.vox.com/politics/491167/ai-s...irth-rates
It rather seems to me that the reason people don't have more kids is because cost of living is on the rise, there are wars across the world, rise of xenophobia, and the gloomy future of the polluted unlivable world.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
