The fertility rate in the US has been falling for decades, leading researchers and policymakers to look for causes that can help find solutions. Several theories have been proposed, including rising child care costs, the rise in contraceptive use, and even the role of car seat regulations.
A new study lays out a provocative culprit succinctly: the smartphone. But some researchers are skeptical about this single factor’s ability to play such an outsized role in a long-term trend.
The year 2007 marked a particularly significant “turning point” in the U.S. fertility rate, said Caitlin Myers, an economist at Middlebury College and the National Bureau of Economic Research, and lead author of the new study.
The Great Recession began at the end of the year, just a few months after Apple began shipping the iPhone in the US – the first modern smartphone.
“Initially, we all assumed it was the global recession. It has long been known that the birth rate is pro-cyclical, so the conventional wisdom was that it would rise again,” she said. “But then we had a baby-free recovery.”
In the years that followed, Myers said he often brought up the subject of “iGen” — the name given to the first generation to grow up entirely in a world with smartphones — over dinner and wondered about the drop in so-called risky behaviors among this group, which tends to have less sex and use fewer substances.
His stepson, Ezekiel Hooper, also noticed that his younger siblings had very different relationships than he did, with much more social interaction happening through screens than in person — interactions that, physically, created “no chance of having a child,” he said.
Hooper began investigating this connection between smartphones and fertility rate for his senior thesis while studying at Middlebury a few years ago, and co-authored the which was published last week.
In it, he and Myers tracked the expansion of AT&T’s mobile broadband – which was initially the only network available for the iPhone – and compared the variation in the fertility rate between 2007 and 2011 with the share of the population that had access to the network.
They found that in counties where more than 90% of residents had early access to smartphones, the fertility rate dropped significantly more than in counties where less than 10% of residents had network coverage.
The difference was most pronounced among teenagers; The birth rate among 15- to 19-year-olds fell by about 26% between 2007 and 2011 in counties with broad smartphone access, compared to a 14% drop in counties with limited smartphone access.
For women in their 20s, the birth rate fell 15% in counties with broad access, compared to 10% in those with limited access. For women in their 30s, the birth rate fell slightly in counties with broad access, while it increased in other counties.
Overall, researchers estimate that the early popularization of the iPhone caused between a third and a half of the drop in the overall fertility rate in the US between 2007 and 2011.
The new study can’t explain exactly why smartphones would reduce fertility rates, but researchers theorize it may be related to the ways in which the technology — particularly in ways that would make sexual intercourse and subsequent pregnancy less likely.
The drop in unplanned pregnancies among young people is a crucial factor in the overall decline in the U.S. fertility rate, researchers say. And, in a way, the smartphone has interrupted pathways that could lead to an unplanned pregnancy.
According to Hooper, the smartphone may have become a “substitute” for physical contact and in-person human interaction.
“Instead of seeking out that interaction with other people, they may be turning to online pornography,” he said. “Maybe instead of going out and having these physical interactions with your friends and colleagues, you’re having these .”
A long history of declining fertility
Other experts, who focus less on the economic aspects of fertility and more on the social and health aspects, agree that smartphones have played a role in changing relationship patterns, which can lead to lower fertility rates — but say the broader context is important.
“It’s true that people are marrying later, forming couples later, and spending less of their adult lives in stable relationships, and smartphones may contribute to these trends. But they are occurring in parallel with major changes in the costs of housing, education, the job market, gender norms, and social life,” Dr. Alison Gemmill, an associate professor of epidemiology at the UCLA School of Public Health whose research focuses on U.S. fertility patterns and other reproductive health topics, said in an email. “Unraveling these factors is a challenge.”
The 2007 inflection point appears less significant when viewed over a broader period, some experts say. The general trend of declining fertility in the US began decades before the launch of the iPhone. This is especially true when it comes to teen birth rates, which have been falling since the 1950s.
“Looking at this longer history gives us a better sense of the range of explanations that make sense,” said Dr. Sarah Hayford, director of the Population Research Institute and professor of sociology at Ohio State University. “If you want to say that this change has been happening for 100 years, it is probably some factor that has been continuous over that period, rather than something that happened 15 years ago.”
Hayford said there is also a long history of association between technological changes and birth rates. Studies conducted in the 1960s and 1970s looked at how the spread of radio and television may have exposed people to ideals about small families.
“More broadly, exposure to technology ends up changing our sources of information and ideas about what types of families are desirable and what types of lives are desirable in general,” she said. “The idea that we would see this effect so pronounced in 2007 with a very specific technology, I’m a little more skeptical.”
The period analyzed by the new research also coincides with a time when access to IUDs and injectable contraceptives has expanded considerably for young people in the U.S., Hayford said. For her, this represents a much more direct relationship with the reduction in birth rates among teenagers and the reduction in unwanted pregnancies than smartphones.
The concept of a smartphone’s functions has also changed drastically since its launch. The first iPhone allowed people to browse the internet anywhere and take photos with their cell phone, but there were far fewer apps and the use of social networks was practically non-existent. Dating apps became popular in the mid-2010s, and OnlyFans launched in 2016.
“People often associate smartphones with addictive scrolling, highly personalized content, and digital substitutes for face-to-face interaction. The period studied here largely predates the widespread adoption of many of these features,” said Gemmill.
A complex political issue
The researchers of the new study make it clear that they do not believe that smartphones are the only reason for the declining fertility rate in the US.
“We’re not saying this is the only factor. We’re saying it’s an important factor,” Myers said, adding that the study was designed to take into account as many confounding factors as possible. But it’s a complex political problem to solve if the goal is to increase the fertility rate, he said.
“I think it’s relevant to public policy because I worry that we’re not fully understanding why fertility is declining and that we’re looking in the wrong places,” Myers said. “But at the same time, I don’t know that I have a ready political solution to the cell phone issue. No one thinks the government is going to confiscate all our phones, and I’m not suggesting it should.”
O pro-natalist movement gained strength during the Trump administration, driven by political measures aimed at encouraging people to have more children.
“Perhaps the answers will revolve around how policymakers can promote in-person human interaction in the future, rather than specific financial incentives,” Hooper said.
