"In den vergangenen Jahrzehnten sank die Geburtenrate weltweit, weil Paare weniger Kinder bekamen. Der Hauptgrund ist nun, dass es weniger Paare gibt ………………….In vielen Ländern ist der Rückgang bei Geburten und Paarungen bei denen mit der geringsten Bildung und dem niedrigsten Einkommen viel stärker. Dagegen ist der Anteil der Hochschulabsolventen, die Paare gründen und Kinder bekommen, stabil oder steigt teilweise sogar an."
Das lässt mich über Korrelation und Kausalität nachdenken. Wenn die ärmere Arbeiterklasse sich Smartphones anschaffte, während ihre Löhne und Wohnmöglichkeiten drastisch sanken, wer ist dann für den Mangel an Babys verantwortlich?
Ironischerweise sind die Menschen, die sich am meisten über dieses Thema aufregen, am wenigsten bereit, politische Veränderungen zu befürworten, die den Trend umkehren könnten. Wie auch immer, die heutigen 8 Milliarden Menschen scheinen eine Menge Menschen zu sein. Wen kümmert es, wenn es nie 10 oder 20 Milliarden gibt?
New research suggests Big Tech may be the primary cause of the downturn in global fertility. – "falling birth rates appear to be part of a broader phenomenon of young adult singledom, isolation and deteriorating wellbeing."
byu/lughnasadh inFuturology
29 Kommentare
It is a long time since I was at university (although my daughter was there much more recently) but the thing I recall most was the opportunities for meeting partners were better at university than anywhere else (I am still married to my partner from university, as are a number of friends). So that aspect of the pattern may not be very surprising.
There’s going to be adjustments and adaptions to declining populations, though is that really a bad thing?
The human population went through tremendous growth the past one hundred years, growing from two billion to over eight billion.
To put that into context, it took hundreds of thousands of years for the human population to reach one billion in 1804, a little over one hundreds years to reach two billion in the 1920s. In the past one hundred years, we have multiplied that by four times.
**A lower birthrate that doesn’t „*****maintain*****“ the current world’s population doesn’t mean our species is dying or will disappear**, **it just means that the population will return to gradual levels instead of trying to maintain or increase that exponential growth.**
Yes, this creates issues, such as a population that will be heavily older (until they die off) and an economic system that ~~relies~~ relied on a larger younger workforce to support the older population but we’ll be able to adjust to that, as we’ve done throughout history.
While the planet is able to sustain a much larger population. Plenty of natural resources, as well. The problem we have is our current system to support that large population. We’re a system based on mass consumerism and we create the artificial scarcity regarding meeting the basic needs for everyone.
Maybe this will usher in a new age where consumerism and working all the damn time isn’t our focus anymore and we move beyond that as a society.
Who cares if there’s 10 or 20 billion people? I think they’re fundamentally misunderstanding the risks of population decline and the maths behind them.
My dad was a mailman and could afford a four room house with garden. I can barely afford a two room appartment. Cost of living is insane and it gets worse.
Na man, its late Stage capitalism.
Somebody who can bearly afford rent and food wont reproduce.
I always wonder why is the obsession with birth rates in this sub? Again, we aren’t short of humans and we will not be short of humans supply for at least 300 hundred years.
Staring at phones or videogames when we ought to be talking to each other.
We have 40 year high birthrates in 2007 – 2008, and we had computers and internet for *years*. Politicians was complaining about too many babies were being born, Japan had *rising birth rates* from 2011 – 2015, until they hit another economic shock
Great Recession, the politicians taking advatage of the Great Recession, and cost of living is the why. Not the internet
Its the camera phones fault. There is always someone got their cameraphone out ready to record a failed semi-intoxicated attempt at chatting someone up. Intoxicated friend group can really bond whilst getting drunk, creating long lasting friendships and memories of having a good time. Again ruined by camera phones.
If you’ve never looked into the hierarchy of needs, this could be a good moment to look it up.
There’s probably going to be a bunch of replies about how that isn’t correct or not relevant. But the discussions being had and answers that are coming from the people in countries with birthrates that are approaching or below replacement levels is basically „why would I want to do that?“
Tech may well have had a big impact, but the reasons being given by people not having children is „lack of non working time“ and the prospect of a bleak & uncertain future for children.
I’m so frustrated that I keep seeing people looking in all the wrong places for explanations about the falling birthrate. I have one child and if we could afford it, we’d have more. It’s finances!!!
The AIDS paranoia epidemic in the 80s was designed and perpetuated by elites to reduce the population.
Make no mistake. AIDS was real.
The *paranoia* and threat to straight couples? Manufactured. I don’t expect you to believe this from this reddit post alone. If there is sincere, good faith interest in this, let me know and I’ll elaborate.
Why shack up with that guy you don’t really like in that city you really want to be in when you can still connect with all your friends in that city from the suburbs!
Why do (U.S.) politicians keep disabled folks below the „poverty line“ that was also dictated by those same politicians?
Why does a single disabled person receive around $140/month for food?
Why don’t people want to birth children into junior authoritarianism, and flood water, and drought?
These are the great unknowable mysteries of the universe.
Definitely enables NEETs to minimize touching grass without going crazy from boredom in their rooms.
Amazon doesn’t make money by having adults going out shopping or using the internet less (aws)
Meta doesn’t make money by adults meeting and talking in person
Google doesn’t make money by adults asking each other questions
Apple doesn’t make money by adults interacting with each other
Etc. etc.
Add in a whole bunch of the most well compensated people and powerful compute to figure out how to keep people doing the things that make them money and it’s not as surprising to see how we got here
Edit to add:
the ones that are supposed to be regulating and policy making to prevent this type of manipulation of its citizens don’t make money unless those companies make money.
So redesign society instead of constantly relying on more people with ever increasing consumerism. There’s plenty of us and the resources are not infinite. We’ve had to resort to altering our food just to keep up with demand. Remember how a banana or a tomato used to taste 30 years ago? Way better than the genetically altered giants they have now. Housing shortage? Sure, ok. How far do you want cities to expand, and going up just creates density.
We had enough kids to replace ourselves, and two out of my 3 siblings decided to have zero. That’s good enough. I also don’t understand these huge families. Unless you’re wealthy, those kids just don’t get as many things that require money. Disney? Yeah you aren’t taking your 6 kids there on the same income as we have but I’m taking my 2.
I like how they’ll report every possible thing besides money. It’s not tech, It costs too much for young people to casually hang out in public anymore. The tech is a meager salve for societal loneliness.
Something I saw pointed out on Reddit a while ago that surprised me, was the fact that all for-profit dating services have a perverse incentive to keep their users single. A use who finds love is one less customer, so the more money you can squeeze out of your clients before they leave the app, the better.
This was in a discussion about a state-run dating app concept out of Japan. While I could see a state run dating app having a whole slew of new ethical dillemas, the fact that it does not have an incentive to work against its users own goals is a good start.
Or maybe the fact that I can’t afford my self, how the fuck am I supposed to afford a date? A GF? A child? Geeeze I wonder why. At least Porn is free…
Funny how the hours we spend on these apps and phones never blames itself for insert problem.
The reason growth is actually important is because all societal models are based on the growth paradigm. Negative indicators lead to austerity politics which then create the crisis of scarcity population was supposed to cause anyway.
In simpler terms, if there aren’t enough people to replace workers in society, societal functions start to slow or collapse and wealth accumulates upward to justify stimulus downward. That’s been the neoliberal trend of the last 50 years. It may be changing, but it’s hard to say right now.
The more commonly accepted reason for the decline in birthrates has been economic precarity, real or imagined. That’s what tech has really expanded more than it’s changed reproductive behavior. It really drops off the cliff around 2008 for a reason, but of course that also correlates to the rise of social media, which in some ways helped set the market terms of the recovery back then. The political and economic realities of life on earth are too filled with uncertainty and on top of that we actually did do a good job doing youth pregnancy prevention education over the last few decades so it’s made it seem socially irresponsible to have a child early. The contemporary prime reproducing generation, despite their quirks is disciplined by years of austerity to be more economically „practical.“
It’s a combination of things. Parenthood isn’t particularly glorified in society. It sucks. You have kids. You have to pay daycare. You have less free time and less money to travel. People just don’t want to have kids anymore. They don’t see the point. You see this phenomena in well to do countries.
Incredible. Instead of throwing money into initiatives that make it financially viable to have kids, let alone survive once you move out of your parents house… They fund studies to prove it’s due to mobile phones, social media, the Internet, violent video games, porn etc. Anything they consider a luxury or amoral gets vilified because they don’t want to admit nobody can afford to have and raise children.
People are already struggling to pay rent and feed themselves, the job market is impossible and everything you need to sustain yourself is unaffordable. But please, research bros, continue to tell us it’s technology killing the fertility industry or whatever.
Wages have essentially been stagnant for 20 years.
That’s it. That’s the reason. That’s the whole reason. It’s money.
I think we need to have something like senior housing, but for young adults for people between 20-30 with the community activities…etc.
You are kinda provided with a perfect set up through college and immediately left to die alone after when you need a sense of community the most.
This stuff might be the nail in the coffin but the problem is multifaceted.
I think a lot of it is that in the past peopel were somewhat railroaded into having kids. If you just followed lifes natural urges, boom, kids come out. Now you can decide not to do that, so people do.
Yeh, gonna be that constantly increasing cost of living too, boss.
I think people massively underestimate how interconnected this is: housing costs, job precarity, social media, delayed adulthood, declining community structures, algorithmic entertainment, burnout, dating app dynamics, and economic pessimism all reinforcing each other simultaneously.