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Expert blames phones as a driving factor for the declining birth rate that Elon Musk warns could lead to human extinction
Fortune ^ | March 28, 2025 | Alexa Mikhail

Posted on 03/31/2025 8:37:47 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican

The world’s population apex is in sight.

The United Nations predicts the global population will peak at 10.3 billion by the mid-2080s and cap off. Once speculated to be centuries away, the peak is now within grasp due to declining fertility rates across the world.

Last year, the U.S. fertility rate hit a historic low. Between 2014 and 2020, the fertility rate consistently decreased by 2% each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Most notably, women between the ages of 20 and 39 are not having as many children as prior generations.

The economy has shouldered most of the blame for declining fertility rates. Having children is an expensive endeavor—and the tough housing market, a lack of universal paid family leave, and a shortage of affordable child care are not helping. Additionally, more people are marrying later in life than generations prior and having fewer children as a result.

However, Alice Evans, a social scientist at King’s College London, believes the baby bust is credited to something else entirely because the decline is consistent across vastly different economic landscapes.

So what can we attribute it to? More people are staying single—thanks to the phone.

“I think the big change that we see across the world, all at very different levels of income, is the massive improvement in hyper-engaging online entertainment: TikTok, video games, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Bridgerton, Netflix,” Evans says on Vox’s Today Explained podcast to host Noel King. “…these pronatal incentives of saying $2,000, $5,000 to have an extra child, they’re simply too small if the prior constraint is that most people are increasingly single.”

(Excerpt) Read more at fortune.com ...


TOPICS: Society
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1 posted on 03/31/2025 8:37:48 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
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To: MinorityRepublican
Too many wogs.

2 posted on 03/31/2025 8:39:08 PM PDT by Governor Dinwiddie ( O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is gracious, and His mercy endureth forever. — Psalm 106)
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To: MinorityRepublican

This species has amused itself to death.


3 posted on 03/31/2025 8:39:32 PM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: MinorityRepublican
Sheesh..."a lack of universal paid family leave, and a shortage of affordable child care are not helping"

People didn't have those things for many millennia. However did our ancestors maintain high fertility rates without universal paid family leave and affordable child care? More recently, how did my wife and I, Mom & Dad, and our grandparents manage to have three kids without those things?

Stupid "modern" writer is just espousing the trendy progressive explanation du jour.

4 posted on 03/31/2025 8:43:29 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom (PDJT doesn’t just walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He swaggers.)
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To: MinorityRepublican

Wife and mother ceased to be the primary role of a woman between 18 and 35. Prioritize other things and other things are what you have instead of a husband and children. Besides, cats are much easier to raise than children


5 posted on 03/31/2025 8:49:46 PM PDT by ETCM (“There is no security, no safety, in the appeasement of evil.” — Ronald Reagan)
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To: dfwgator

I just want my bread and circuses. I don’t have time to worry about the human species.


6 posted on 03/31/2025 8:50:27 PM PDT by BipolarBob (After my drug test, they either said "Urine Trouble" or You're in trouble". )
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To: MinorityRepublican

No, it’s ‘Rat, Leftist, Woke nonsense.


7 posted on 03/31/2025 9:11:04 PM PDT by Paladin2
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To: Governor Dinwiddie

I LOLed.


8 posted on 03/31/2025 9:13:54 PM PDT by BradyLS (DO NOT FEED THE BEARS!)
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To: dfwgator

A Roger Waters reference?


9 posted on 03/31/2025 9:15:57 PM PDT by BradyLS (DO NOT FEED THE BEARS!)
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To: MinorityRepublican

Yup!
Too many opportunities for HARRUMPH virtual dating, which lessens the business of courtship of humans.


10 posted on 03/31/2025 10:30:57 PM PDT by Terry L Smith
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To: MinorityRepublican
Yeah, let's blame the phone.

Let's ignore the income tax, which in addition to lowering income levels, has been used as a tool against citizens. Governments are now diametrically opposed to citizens instead of being aligned to them.

Let's ignore the Socialist programs that take money from working young adults and gives it to the indolent, often with children from multiple fathers. Young adults can't afford to have children because they're forced to pay for other people's children.

Let's ignore how the government prints fiat money which disproportionately devalues the savings of working families. Young adults can't afford to buy houses for those children to live in, much less a vehicle to drive them around.

Let's ignore misandrist laws spread by CommuFeminists. The institution of marriage has no business being in any "family law" court. "Family law" is an impossibility other than a tool to damage the institutions it purports to protect. The government inserts itself into every marriage as an unwanted and hostile third party. It's just the kind of situation one would want to raise children in - not.

Let's ignore the intentional efforts to keep the population ignorant, lessening their chances of earning necessary levels of income, as well as the life skills needed to navigate a complex, modern world. They want people ignorant and the results of their efforts are everywhere.

Let's ignore the destruction of communities by forcing Replacement Americans into neighborhoods. The same globalists who spread the lie that "it takes a village to raise a child" have violated U.S. law to fill that village with people who have no intention of contributing to a community.

Let's ignore concentrated attacks by government on religion and morality - both critical to marriage and family.

Let's ignore claims (and laws) that give government employees, not the parents, "ownership" of the children. Don't be surprised if young adults choose to avoid that sick situation.

Let's ignore what government did to circumvent the will of the people by having the courts, not the legislature, implement legalized murder of unborn children - devaluing all life. When the globalists show just how clearly they'll control the population, who would be surprised if young adults choose not to have children to feed to Moloch?

Let's ignore the closing of mental institutions decades ago. Many young people today are brutally and painfully aware that one or both of their parents suffer from mental illnesses and really screwed them up. These young people have made the personal commitment to not do the same to children of their own - by refusing to have children.

But yeah, let's blame the phone - a device that lets users share information with each other on the real causes of the problems they face.

11 posted on 03/31/2025 10:43:34 PM PDT by T.B. Yoits
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To: MinorityRepublican

Too few dance halls and ballrooms.


12 posted on 03/31/2025 10:45:08 PM PDT by thecodont
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To: MinorityRepublican

It’s not the phones. It’s the laws.


13 posted on 03/31/2025 11:12:12 PM PDT by Pikachu_Dad
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To: MinorityRepublican
The birth rate in Africa is high. That Continent has over a billion people. If this trend continues the whole world will end up like Africa.
14 posted on 04/01/2025 12:50:06 AM PDT by Nateman (Democrats did not strive for fraud friendly voting merely to continue honest elections.)
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To: MinorityRepublican

LOOK at all the charts: use of “ADHD” medication, rate of female support for liberalism, depression, opioid use, white male suicide, marriage, birth rates....ALL started going bad after June 29, 2007: the day the iPhone was introduced. The single most devastating action against Western culture in perhaps it’s entire history.


15 posted on 04/01/2025 1:55:37 AM PDT by montag813
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To: MinorityRepublican
Young people are using Tik Tok etc instead of having sex and having children?
Nonsense!
16 posted on 04/01/2025 3:18:29 AM PDT by SmokingJoe
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To: MinorityRepublican

Psalm 128:2

2 You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands;
you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you.

There is a limited amount of fruit from chat, gaming, gawking, and rubber-necking online.


17 posted on 04/01/2025 3:29:18 AM PDT by linMcHlp
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To: MinorityRepublican

Over 8 billion people. We’re not near extinction.

Caucasians and their culture may however be challenged to survive.


18 posted on 04/01/2025 3:35:16 AM PDT by 9YearLurker
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To: MinorityRepublican

I think the server will go down before any kind of human extinction event.


19 posted on 04/01/2025 5:30:49 AM PDT by Delta 21 (If anyone is treasonous, it is those who call me such.)
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To: linMcHlp
I wish to add, to my reply 17, above about Pslams 128:2

There is neither fruit nor fruitful gain, from the attacking and bashing any fellow member of FreeRepublic.com.

20 posted on 04/01/2025 5:35:42 AM PDT by linMcHlp
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