Open Veils · Answer
What role do smartphones play in the declining birth rate in America?
A June 2026 NBER working paper provides the strongest causal evidence yet that smartphone diffusion is a direct driver of fertility decline, not merely correlated with it. The iPhone's AT&T carrier monopoly (2007–2011) created a natural experiment showing counties with high AT&T broadband coverage saw birth rates fall significantly harder than low-coverage counties. Researcher Myers estimates smartphones explain 12–53% of the 2007–2011 fertility collapse. Jonathan Haidt's broader thesis in 'The Anxious Generation' — that smartphones restructure adolescent social and sexual behavior — now has quantitative causal backing.
Evidence
- (June 2026), authored by Myers and collaborators, exploits a near-perfect natural experiment: Apple sold the first iPhone exclusively through AT&T from June 2007 through February 2011, creating geographic variation in early smartphone access tied purely to AT&T mobile broadband coverage rather than local demand.
- Myers states plainly: 'For every age group, we see evidence that the iPhone depresses fertility' (Axios, June 2026).
- The proposed mechanisms align with concerns raised independently by Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge: reduced in-person interaction, increased pornography consumption, and declining sexual frequency — all documented in national time-use and behavioral surveys cited within the paper.
- This corroborates Twenge's generational data in 'iGen,' which flagged post-2012 collapses in teen dating, sexual initiation, and partnering behavior.
- Wilhelm Reich's earlier — and suppressed — theorizing about mass media's libido-displacing function offers a deeper esoteric frame: Reich argued artificial stimulation substitutes for embodied sexual and relational energy, a thesis that the pornography-displacement mechanism in the NBER paper structurally echoes.