Did cell phones cause the birth rate decline?: the Financial Times hypothesis that sparked a global discussion

The article, signed by data journalist John Burn-Murdoch, argues that the collapse of the birth rate is no longer a phenomenon limited to rich and aging countries, but rather a simultaneous and accelerated trend in much of the planet.

The author proposes a provocative hypothesis: in addition to traditional economic and cultural factors, the digital revolution It could be changing the way people relate, form couples, and eventually have children.

The post quickly went viral on X, Reddit and other platforms, where thousands of users discussed whether phones are really part of the problem or if they just temporarily coincide with much deeper social changes.

According to the report, More than two thirds of the world’s 195 countries are already below the so-called “replacement rate” of 2.1 children per woman, the level necessary to maintain a stable population without depending on immigration.

The text highlights that even international organizations were outdated in the face of the speed of the phenomenon. The HIMfor example, had projected that South Korea would have 350,000 births in 2023, but the actual figure ended up being just 230,000.

“The decline in fertility is the great question of our time”he stated to the FT the economist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and researcher specialized in demography. According to him, a large part of the current economic and social problems derive from this sustained drop in births.

The article highlights that the trend It no longer affects only Europe or East Asia. In 2023, Mexico’s birth rate fell below that of the United States for the first time. Then the same thing happened in Brazil, Tunisia, Iran and Sri Lanka.

The investigation of Financial Times reviews demographic data, social statistics, and recent academic studies. One of the central points is that the current decline is no longer explained solely because couples have fewer children, but because there are directly fewer couples.

A study cited in the note, carried out by demographer Stephen Shaw, maintains that in the United States and other developed countries the number of children mothers have remains relatively stable. What has fallen sharply in the last 15 years is the proportion of women who have children. Also Marriage and cohabitation rates plummeted.

For him FTthere appears the possible link with technology. The text mentions a paper published by Nathan Hudson and Hernan Moscoso-Boedo, researchers at the University of Cincinnati, which analyzed the expansion of 4G mobile networks in the United States and the United Kingdom.

According to this work, birth rates began to fall first and fastest in areas that received mobile connection earlier high speed.

The author suggests that smartphones have transformed the way young people spend their time and They drastically reduced in-person socialization: “The time that young people spend socializing face to face fell very markedly.”

He FT He also claims to have found Similar patterns in different countries. In the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, birth rates among adolescents and young adults began to fall sharply since 2007, coinciding with the massification of smartphones. Something similar later happened in France, Poland, Mexico, Morocco and Indonesia.

In South Korea, one of the most extreme cases in the world, in-person socializing among young adults dropped by half in just two decades.

“To meet someone to marry you have to interact with a lot of people,” he explained to the FT demographer Lyman Stone. “If you socialize much less, it will take you much longer to find a partner, if you find one at all.”

Stone further added that social media alters expectations about relationships. “If you spend your time on Instagram, your standards become anchored to an artificial idea of ​​normal”, he stated.

The article also quotes economist Melissa Kearney, from the University of Notre Dame, who considered “quite plausible” that the modern digital ecosystem has had profound effects on couple formation.

Another researcher mentioned is Alice Evans, from Stanford, who argued that Instagram and TikTok allow many women to “bypass traditional authorities” and raise your expectations regarding a relationship.

However, the hypothesis immediately opened a strong online discussion.

Many users considered that the article confused correlation with causation. That is to say: the fact that the expansion of smartphones has coincided with the acceleration of the decline in birth rates does not necessarily imply that it is the main cause.

One of the most viral debates was carried out precisely by Jesus Fernandez-Villaverdeprofessor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the specialists cited in the article by Financial Times.

In an extensive post on X, he maintained that “Smartphones are not the explanation” of the recent collapse in fertility, although they do function as “accelerators” of much deeper forces that had already been acting for decades.

“The decline in fertility occurs in rich, poor, religious, secular countries, with greater or lesser gender equality. No specific explanation for each country serves to understand such a simultaneous phenomenon.”, wrote the economist.

Fernández-Villaverde recalled that the drop in birth rates It started long before the existence of smartphones. As he explained, the first major decline occurred between the 19th century and the mid-20th century, driven by the drop in infant mortality and the transition from rural societies to urban and industrialized economies.

For the academic, the current phenomenon responds more to transformations associated with “modernity”: secularization, more expensive housing, dissolution of traditional social networks, increasingly competitive educational careers, and a change in the economic balance within couples.

In this context, he considered that social networks amplify and accelerate cultural changes that would have also occurred. “What used to take 25 years now happens in 10”he pointed out. He even estimated that without smartphones, Italy’s fertility rate would probably be just a few tenths higher.

The author of the article FTJohn Burn-Murdoch, responded to the proposal and partially agreed. As he wrote in X, the central idea of ​​his research is precisely that smartphones and social networks work as “accelerators, amplifiers and internationalizers” of social and cultural changes that have been developing for decades.

Burn-Murdoch added that even if social media disappeared overnight, the trend probably wouldn’t reverse immediately, because many of the cultural norms eroded by the internet They had been built for centuries in social and economic contexts that no longer exist.

Even so, the journalist maintained that there could be a specific effect associated with replacement of face-to-face socialization time by digital consumption, although he admitted that it is still difficult to measure exactly how much that factor weighs.

Among the most repeated responses on networks, another argument also appeared: the huge reduction in teenage pregnancies and unplanned in different regions of the world.

Several users highlighted that an important part of the global drop in birth rates is explained by the decrease in child and adolescent pregnancies, historically very high in many countries. The expansion of sexual education, access to contraceptive methods and prevention programs were indicated as central factors.

Others suggested that in Latin America, Europe and part of Asia the phenomenon is more related to the postponement of motherhood among middle-class and professional women.

According to that view, many women prioritize studies, careers or stability economically before having children, while others simply abandon the idea due to the difficulty of finding an “ideal time.”

The article itself FT recognizes that the economic factors continue to have weight, although he maintains that on their own are not enough to explain such a rapid and global decline.

The difficulty accessing housing appears as one of those elements. The text states that in the United States and the United Kingdom a significant part of the decline in birth rates since the 1990s can be explained by the fall in home ownership and the increase in young people who continue to live with their parents.

Also mentions changes in gender dynamics and on the relative economic situation between young men and women.

But he Financial Times concludes that these processes had been developing slowly for decades and they do not fully explain the sharp acceleration registered since the end of the 2000s.

“The best hope for reversing the trend might be change our digital habits”, the article states towards the end, although it admits that there is no simple solution nor definitive consensus on the causes.