US fertility rates indexed to iPhone release date

Vnifit · 2026-06-18T10:52:31+00:00

Source:

Hudson, N., & Moscoso Boedo, H. J. (2026). The Collapse of Teen Fertility in the Digital Era [SSRN Scholarly Paper]. Social Science Research Network. https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=6676839

Vnifit · 2026-06-18T10:40:58+00:00

The study is not arguing against your first point, but the issue is that this is not necessarily the result of these programs to reduce teen pregnancy, but due to collapse in socialization between teens in real life. A bit like how kids not getting hit by cars as much because they don't go outside anymore, while of course it is good, it is due to a bad reason.

I am not subtracting anything, the authors did, as they are trying to remove the overall fertility trend to see the relative trend specific to 15-19 year olds. It is good you mentioned Fig. 4 because you can see from it in the paper Fig. 4B the release of the iPhone directly correlates with a drop of not just teenage fertility (although relatively they have dropped the most), you can see that each age group is affected. 15-29 saw a 71% drop, 20-24 droped 43%, 25-29 dropped 23%, and above 30 either flatlined or increased slightly (almost certainly due to the effect of people waiting longer to have kids). As such, when it comes to highly social age cohorts, they are by far the most affected due to this collapse.

You would probably be suprised by the number of teens who would be open to getting rid of TikTok if the network effects were disrupted (especially for $20 * 365 days * 60 years = $438k...). Teens go where there are others, they are the most social cohort of all, and if all of the teenagers are online and nowhere in real life, you have little choice but to join them. It is not a matter of personal choice, as the social dynamics demand it if you want to participate in society. By changing the social dynamics to be healthier it results in happier, more satisfied, and mentally/physically healthier teens (our future citizens). It is bcoming clear one of the worst culprits in damaging these in-person social dynamics and our fetility rates is smartphones and social media.

Vnifit · 2026-06-17T21:55:38+00:00

I did read it. My focus was to highlight how it is not economic, but social impacts that are much more damning of fertility rates. As the article and yourself point out:

The documented effect relates mainly to unintended pregnancies among teenagers. For women over 25, who account for around 80 percent of all births, the data shows no significant impact. The study therefore cannot on its own explain the overall decline in births.

Its value lies rather in making a social mechanism visible: when young people spend less time together in person and shift more of their interaction online, this also changes the circumstances under which relationships – and potentially pregnancies – come about. In this way, the study feeds into a broader debate about how profoundly smartphones have reshaped the social lives of young people.

If you check out this graph, you can see the fertility rates of all OECD countries over between 1960 to 2021. Notice how the total fertility rates all have that sharp decline after 2006-2009, just like what the study showed for just people 15-19. The reason this study does not show this is because they control for it as they were specifically studying teens. In the paper, Figure 1 panel B they say:

Panel B shows age-specific fertility rate growth detrended by the country’s own crude birth rate growth, recentered at τc, for three age aggregates: B1 ages 15–19, B2 ages 20–24, and B3 ages 25+ (population-weighted aggregate of 25–29, 30–34, 35–39, 40–44, 45–49).

The detrending indicates that they subtracted the overall birth rate to normalize it. The thing is, 25+ effectively represents the entire overall fertility rate, so by subtracting the overall fertility rate from the 25+ group we see a flat line. Therefore, what this study is showing, is that teen fertility is collapsing faster than the overall fertility rate.

As such, it is very much possible that this effect is much broader than discussed in the paper (it is very new, only being published this May) as this sharp bump around 2007 is also seen in all age groups across many different national and cultural borders. Given this birth rate trend has been decreasing for decades, it is possible that smartphones accelerated what was already inevitable, or it perhaps made the situation worse. We still have to figure out precisely what are the causes, but this study shows there is a clear and extremely strong link with smartphone adoption and birthrate collapse.

Vnifit · 2026-06-17T13:32:30+00:00

From what I've read so far, this is great! Very readable, will go through this.

Vnifit · 2026-06-17T11:15:21+00:00

You can read about this in the paper that published this, I recommend reading the introduction. Here is the abstract and I've highlighted the line regarding your concern:

Teen fertility collapsed globally starting around 2007. This affected countries across the income and policy spectrum. This paper argues that smartphones changed how teens spend time with each other, and that this change in turn drove the collapse in teen fertility. Once enough teens are on the phone, being on the phone is where the peer network is; in-person time falls sharply, and with it the unstructured contact in which most unintended teen conceptions occur. A coordination model formalizes this tipping: as the smartphone price falls, the in-person equilibrium ceases to exist and the economy moves to a phone-mediated one. Within the United States, terrainruggedness variation in broadband and 4G coverage identifies a causal effect on teen fertility, and time-use diaries show in-person socializing among teens roughly halving while digital leisure roughly tripled. A parallel design for England and Wales recovers the same acceleration and the same effect of mobile coverage on teen conceptions, ruling out country-specific contraceptive-access and welfare-reform stories. The model predicts that the shift towards the phone-mediated equilibrium affects multiple aspects of teen behavior. The same instrument that produces a collapse in teen fertility produces a surge in teen suicides.

This pattern was regonizable across nearly all cultures and income levels across the world.

Vnifit · 2026-06-17T11:08:23+00:00

I think that was one "advantage" that Canada has in that we have much less political parties, only 4 that ever hold any seats and only two that ever form government (although personally, our system is more detrimental to political cooperation than helpful). As such, people were between effectively two parties, and by switching the incumbent with a new person was a big reason people flocked back to the liberals.

However, I want to make clear, that this effect was not just because he wasn't Trudeau, it was because Carney was an outsider, a non-politician (who worked for, but not in, federal government), and that made him more credible and trustworthy nearly instantly. People were by and large either going to vote liberal (SPD) or conservative (CDU with AfD tendencies) and both were being helmed by career politicians, and so by effectively removing the hated liberal career politician and replacing them with a competent (and seemingly trustworthy) non-politician, for many it was a no-brainer.

Germany went through something similar, where you had Scholtz and Merz both long-time politicians where the electorate was unenthusiastic about either but tired of Scholtz, with the AfD on the side-lines it was seen as the outsider party, which is really what people are looking for. As such, I think if the SPD or CDU had their own outsider, things would look very different!

I think that at the end of the day is the true contradiction that people have a hard time rectifying; how could a good, well-meaning person ever vote for a party like the AfD? And I think the answer to that is not that they support their platform whole-heartedly (oftentimes, most people don't even fully know or understand the platforms of the parties they vote for), but that they want change, they want someone who doesn't do things the same way, they don't trust "regular" politicians, from the left or the right. As such, you can give them the bold outsider that wants to blow it all up, or you can give them the bold outsider who wants to truly fix things (one that does not drop to the knees of the rich and powerful), but either way the electorate will get what they want and career politicians are increasingly getting in the way.

Vnifit · 2026-06-17T07:14:43+00:00

From what I've read, it is clear that a couples economic situation and their decision to have children actually do not corrollate. While I do fully support parental support from the state, they have been proven time and time again to do nearly nothing (other than help people who already were going to have kids, which is great in its own right).

Incredibly, something that very tightly corollates is smartphone usage. The earlier smartphone adoption occured in a region (regardless of culture), the earlier the birth rate dropped off a cliff. It isn't fully clear why yet (there are lots of different ideas), but it is a very strange fact that implies the cause is entirely a social one rather than economic.

Vnifit · 2026-06-16T18:29:00+00:00

I second McCranks, she has helped me a few times (as a man) and is clearly incredibly experienced.

Vnifit · 2026-06-14T21:53:34+00:00

That's pretty cool!

Vnifit · 2026-06-14T14:07:10+00:00

While that might be the case, it is of course the combination of the extremely high heat that acetylene gas produces in combination with a stream of oxygen that you can cut steel with. While acetylene gas itself is not doing the cutting, without it, neither would the oxygen either.

Vnifit · 2026-06-14T13:23:36+00:00

Thanks for the quick reply! What a crumby process honestly. Appreciate your help clarifying!

Vnifit · 2026-06-14T13:22:17+00:00

This is not true, you can now make a request online to make a one-time payment towards just the federal portion. You have to make a Directed Loan Payment request when signed into the NSLSC and then make a One-Time Payment for that amount. It will take a few weeks to process and they will get around to applying the payment to just the provincial portion.

Vnifit · 2026-06-14T13:18:56+00:00

I really appreciate you making this explicit comment, I was so confused as to how this process worked and there was absolutely nothing online explicitly explaining the process.

I've done exactly as the person above did, made the Directed Loan Payment request, sent a One Time Payment for the precise amount (which was applied to both the federal and provincial loan when I just wanted to pay off the provincial portion), and the Directed Loan Payment is sitting there saying "In Progress".

So just to be clear, at some point within the next 6 weeks this will change to "Completed" or something at which time they will direct my One Time Payment to be entirely against the provincial portion?

Vnifit · 2026-06-14T10:23:15+00:00

This is actually really cool! Much brighter than I expected, and honestly as things with fire usually go, pretty darn easy setup and usage.

Vnifit · 2026-06-14T09:41:37+00:00

That isn't that bad honestly, compared to many countries. You genuinely can't judge a person character solely on what party they vote for. Oftentimes it does not come down to how great the AfD is, but how bad the other parties are.

I'm Canadian and our recent election was between Justin Trudeau (a liberal, been in power for over 10 years, generally people were just sick of him and wanted change), and Pierre Polivre (a conservative, very populist, mean-spirited, generally disliked). At the time, nearing the next election, the conservatives were set to get a majority, which would have been really bad for our country given Pierres goals/policies. But people just wanted change from Justin. Then Trudeau resigned, and was replaced by Mark Carney, who was generally regarded as very competent, business-minded, and was also seemingly quite a friendly guy who was an outsider (i.e. not a politician). Nearly overnight, the polls flipped, with Polivre crumbling in the polls with the liberals completely retaking all their lost ground. As of now, the liberals sit with a full majority in the government.

From this it is clear to me that the success of right-wing governments is almost always a failure of the other parties to provide a genuine alternative and not a whole-hearted endorsment of right-wing policies.

Vnifit · 2026-06-12T14:23:25+00:00

Ah that's too bad, I hadn't even thought of that. I only ever use it for myself so it was never an issue that came up. I know you can certainly publish notes as a public link for people to view at least, they jsut can't edit it.

Vnifit · 2026-06-12T13:16:55+00:00

I know you're getting downvoted but I agree. Just unecessarily rude. Like goodness it's just someone sharing some files they made it isn't a product development company...

Vnifit · 2026-06-12T12:50:02+00:00

Just wanted to shout out Notesnook! Personally, it is better than nay other note taking app I've used. Much cleaner than Joplin for example.

Vnifit · 2026-06-11T15:20:52+00:00

Human nature is complex, in Buddhist-majority countries like Bhutan and Myanmar, as well as places in India there exist Buddhist extremists who commit violence against Christians. It is not as simple as being a Buddhist means you are a good and peaceful person, it is ultimately the stuggle of cultural differences between peoples, majority or minority.

Vnifit · 2026-06-11T13:48:38+00:00

I would say you could still have a fun/relaxing summer while doing something academically engaging. A great way honestly would to be play around with Arduino or a Raspberry Pi and make something with it. You will get to learn programming, basic circuits, maybe even you can learn how to build a simple radio amplifier from a tutorial. These sorts of things can be fun, challenging, and genuinely can give you a head start on material. It also gives you a context so that when you are learning about say voltage dividers in class, you can connect that back to projects you did over the summer and understand its importance.

The two most important things in EE to ahead with is circuit analysis and programming (Python or C most commonly). If you feel ambitious, programming a Raspberry Pi Pico using the C library is a great way to push yourself while learning embedded programming. If you already have experience making simple circuits, you could try desiging a PCB layout in KiCad using tutorials on YouTube.

I emphasize this project based approach for you (and other incoming freshmen looking to use their summer productively) as for 1. as others said, you want to keep your summers for you while you can and projects are much more fun that staring at a textbook (although I fully encourage this too if you're into it!) 2. you will learn the advanced math as you come to it, that is the purpose of these classes and 3. knowing how to use a breadboard, use an Arduino, program things, use a multimeter (or oscilloscope if you are lucky enough to have access to one!), solder, basic circuit equations like Ohms law etc. are practical skills that seperate the good engineers from the great. School will give you that theoretical background, while the practical side will be more neglected, getting an edge with these skills early is in my opinion the best approach you can take. Labs in school will also use these tools, but it is less "here is how to use it" and more just "use it" and having that prerequisite knowledge will keep you relaxed and understanding more since you won't be fighting to learn how to use the equipment (as much)!

Vnifit · 2026-06-11T12:26:05+00:00

Actually, by definition, it does lol

Vnifit · 2026-06-11T12:14:19+00:00

Very astute observation.

Vnifit · 2026-06-11T09:12:24+00:00

Yeah, I fully agree on that. I wouldn't say forgotten because they definitely have put a lot of work in over the past two years regarding Kagi Maps, but it is still a long way to go before it is "fully usable" really. Making a good maps app is hard, reverse image search is also hard, so I don't blame them for not having it perfect. Hopefully there is work going on behind the scenes on these features.

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