(Photo: AJ Watt/iStock)
As governments around the world grapple with rapidly declining birth rates, new US research suggests that smartphones may be playing a much bigger role than previously thought.
A research report published on Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research reads: “Is the iPhone a new contraceptive?”
The report examines why the US birth rate has fallen by about 22% since 2007.
Experts initially believed the global financial crisis of 2008 was largely responsible for the decline. Millions of people experienced economic pressure after the international financial system nearly collapsed.
However, when the economy later recovered, birth rates did not increase again as expected.
Various other reasons have been put forward over the years, including better access to contraception, more women going on to study as well as rising housing and childcare costs.
However, no single cause could be proven so far.
‘Smartphones have changed behaviour’
Economist Caitlin Myers from Middlebury College and Ezekiel Hooper, a student, decided to investigate another possibility: that smartphones, which began to spread particularly rapidly with the introduction of the first iPhone in 2007, changed people’s behavior.
Until 2011, iPhone mobile phones were only available on the US mobile network AT&T. The researchers therefore compared US districts with almost complete AT&T coverage to areas where there was little or no coverage.
Their findings show that access to the iPhone is related to a decrease in births from 4.5% to 8% among girls between 15 and 19 years old.
Among women between 20 and 24 years old, a drop of between 3.2% and 6.6% was recorded.
Even among older women, there were smaller but still statistically significant declines.
The researchers emphasize that smartphones are not the “sole reason” for the declining birth rate, but believe that they probably “played a significant role in the decline in US births after 2007”.
According to the research, smartphones have changed people’s social behavior and led to less personal contact.
“As modern smartphones spread, time spent with friends in person and sexual activity declined sharply, while the use of pornography increased at the same time – possibly as a substitute for sexual relationships,” the report says.
The researchers believe that smartphones have dramatically changed people’s free time, relationships and social habits.
(Photo: Tero Vesalainen/iStock)
Technology shock
Another study, published in May by economists Nathan Hudson and Hernan Moscoso Boedo from the University of Cincinnati, examined similar trends worldwide.
The researchers analyzed data from the World Bank on smartphone penetration and teenage pregnancies in 128 countries.
They found that birth rates began to decline more rapidly as smartphones became more widely available.
According to the investigation, this pattern was observed in countries with “fundamentally different healthcare, welfare, economic and cultural environments”.
The researchers attribute this to what they call a “common global technological shock”.
The research states that the rapid spread of smartphones may have caused changes in people’s behavior worldwide which ultimately also affect the birth rate.
Not everyone is convinced
However, some academics remain skeptical of the conclusions.
For example, experts point out that teenage births in the US have been declining since the early 1990s – long before smartphones existed.
The research also does not explain exactly how governments can practically use these findings to try to increase birth rates.
Meanwhile, rich and poor countries are grappling with the consequences of declining birth rates.
Aging populations and a smaller workforce put increasing pressure on pension and social systems and can dampen economic growth and productivity.
The US Centers for Disease Control says the country’s birth rate is currently at a record low.
Several Asian countries are also grappling with shrinking populations.
Already in 2016, China abandoned its decades-old one-child policy in an attempt to encourage more births. Japan and South Korea have also already spent billions on policies to encourage more children, but with little success.
Even middle-income countries such as India and Brazil are experiencing rapidly declining birth rates, although the poorest countries – especially in sub-Saharan Africa – still have relatively high birth rates.
The new research probably does not mean that smartphones alone are responsible for the world’s birth crisis, but adds a new dimension to a debate with which governments worldwide are increasingly grappling.