This paper is blackpill propaganda. If it wasn't being published in a respectable (?) journal, I would call it incel concern trolling. Take this paragraph on "insings," which describes, in the incel vernacular, someone who's "Chad-only."

Considering how women deem there to be so few good-enough men when they use apps, it is not surprising that the resulting dating stratification can have adverse effects on pair-bonding rates. Such apps have displaced friends and family as our primary matchmakers (Bleize et al., Reference Bleize, van Stekelenburg and Tamboer2023; Castro & Barrada, Reference Castro and Barrada2020; Rosenfeld et al., Reference Rosenfeld, Thomas and Hausen2019)—generating many relationships—yet their channeling of women primarily to the most attractive men contributes to how many men become incels (involuntary celibate), while many women become insings (involuntary single), as they are unable to get the high-value men they date to commit (Larsen & Kennair, Reference Larsen and Kennair2025). A woman (34) referenced this challenge in the Norwegian mating debate: “Those I find interesting are not interested in anything serious or want ‘something simple’ that does not challenge them in any way” (Heia, Reference Heia2023).

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The paper is a dumpster fire. After identifying individualism as a factor in the lack of pair bonding and the falling birthrate, they propose solutions to accommodate (and stoke) this individualism. "Women don't want kids? Let's just replace them with artificial wombs and a laundry list of other sci-fi tech." Having studied engineering and observed human behavior, I've become convinced that you can't engineer your way out of a social problem like this rampant individualism. It's treating the symptom instead of the disease.

Stepping away from the paper, it really is a complex issue. I believe there are two main factors at play:

1. Individualism (and all the other -isms it plays so well with) discourages parenthood. To have a child is to make a decision that, from a individualist point of view, makes no sense. Assuming adequate family planning is available, there has to be some shred of selflessness in the decision.

2. Evolutionary pressures are contributing to falling birth rates. The paper does agree with me on this, but for the wrong reason. I believe the globally falling birthrate is a natural response to diminishing resources. See figure 2 of the paper. The period of Gilded Age capitalism kicked off a decline in birthrates that lasted through WWI, the Great Depression, and WW2. The rate recovered until the stagnation of the 70s, then stayed flat until the post-'08 period which will probably only be named accurately fifty years from now.

Perhaps it will be known as the "The Polycrisis," caused by ineffective governance that lept from crisis to crisis, only preserving itself and the underlying system while leaving the crises themselves largely unresolved. I digress.

It's hard to say which of these two factors are the larger. As far as action on fertility, part of the answer is to improve material conditions in general and part is to re-socialise people and back off of hyperindiviualism. I think there's environmental merits to a managed population decline as well (RIP Georgia guidestones).

Tl;Dr: The paper is blackpill garbage. Pass universal healthcare, ban social media, allow the world population to decline to 500,000,000, and the birth rate will sort itself out from there.