“Looking around the world, we see one really big change which coincides with the fall in fertility,” Evans says. Over the past 15 years or so, smartphones have become ubiquitous, and we have seen the rise of an astonishing array of online entertainment — from online sports gambling to pornography to television streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu.”
Jeez.
Since writers tend to write of their personal experiences we can only conclude that the old fable is untrue. Despite being an ardent onanist she still has good enough eyesight to view porn on a smartphone.
Unless my granny meant it just affected me…
correlation causation etc..
Smart phones are the current bogey man for everything for the hard of thinking classes. I’m sure I read a thing in Nature(?) that said a lot of the stuff people just know about kids attention spans, mental health etc etc and smart phones isn’t supported by evidence.
@Jimmers: In the days when Nature was a science publication that claim might have carried some weight. Now that it competes with the Beano and Pravda I’m less confident of that.
There’s 2 facets to fertility, firstly biological, are people becoming less fertile and unable to have children regardless of how much sex they have? Secondly, are people just having less sex, and thus less opportunities to make babies?Actually monty python style there’s a third facet – how many babies are made and then killed?
The third bit never seems to be mentioned in these ‘why are birth rates dropping in the Western world’ articles. If you add back in all the abortions, how does the birth rate look then?
The first part is definitely a thing, male biological fertility has been dropping for decades, for unknown reasons. But its been a steady decline, not a dropping off a cliff thing. But perhaps we’ve reached a tipping point?
The second part is where the internet comes in. Young people are definitely having less sex now than previous generations, all the studies show this. Ergo something must have caused that. And given how much sex a person has is fundamentally a factor of how much they interact with other human beings on a face to face basis, its not a stretch to consider that a technology that has resulted in an atomisation of society into individuals peering into their devices all day and sitting at home communicating with people who could be on the other side of the planet might be responsible for fewer people getting down and dirty one on one. Partly because they are now physically separated, partly because of that separation they then lack the social skills when they do meet people in person. People who never meet in person or if they do lack the social skills to attract the other aren’t going to end up making babies.
There’s also the strange decline in alcohol consumption among the young. Alcohol has been a facilitator of sex for millennia, so its decline among the young must be having some effect on rates of sexual congress. And I put that decline down to the effect of ‘always on’ 24/7 social media – who as a young person wants to be filmed dead drunk and doing and or saying something stupid and have that plastered all over social media and laughed at (potentially) worldwide? Far better to stay in control and make sure you curate your social media presence.
I cannot believe that a technology that disrupts the face to face interaction of human beings as much as the internet and universal global communication does has not affected the rate at which people interact on the most basic level possible, ie having sex.
“Evans would love to see more (and better) rom coms made, with plots celebrating finding love and having a family. ”
LOL
Patrick Boyle discussed fertility decline a few months ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ispyUPqqL1c&t – rates are holding up where there are fewer opportunities to do new things.
ISIS brides and wives of Hamas commanders always seem to have high fertility rates, so seems to be some truth in this.
Perhaps going back to celebrating motherhood both as a good thing in its own right and a benefit to society rather than denigrating it might help.
So Bongo, it’s only where the girls can’t access anything more entertaining than us blokes that they decide to sprout out the sprogs.
Evidently the ‘keep them barefoot and pregnant approach’ is natures way of making that the human race continues to exist.
Google AI Overview: “Fertility rates began their significant global decline around the 1960s, continuing to fall consistently to the present day. While the 1950s and early 1960s saw high fertility rates, particularly due to the post-WWII baby boom, this trend reversed sharply after 1960. ”
But even if our Times scribe was correct, over the past 15 years or so would coincide exactly with the onset of the Arab Spring. Didn’t Downton Abbey also start around that time?
Jim, good analysis, but haven’t you missed out a fourth possible cause – contraception? Of those people who are having sex, has the proportion deliberately preventing conception increased?
Don’t know if it has, but it’s got to be in there as a possible.
Bongo and others make good points.
Conflict makes babies. In the Iran Iraq war, Persian fertility was over 7. Now it’s under 2, below replacement level.
BiND,
“Perhaps going back to celebrating motherhood both as a good thing in its own right and a benefit to society rather than denigrating it might help.”
I feel like if I was ever going to do a PhD thesis, it would be on how the collective socialisation of women switched from neighbourhoods to workplaces.
It took me a long time to figure out why so many mothers go to work. Obviously, sometimes the work fits well with a family (like teaching), or women are massive earners. But for a lot of women, there is really very little net gain. By the time you’ve paid out for childcare, running a second car, work clothes, you are not earning much per hour.
Now women will say things like “but I don’t want a gap in my CV”. Truth is, no-one running a call centre cares. You did it 5 years ago, you can do it now. Or “I love my job”. Which is a lie because very few women put in the sort of commitment to mastering Excel than the blokes do.
The real truth is that that’s where the other women are. If you stay home, the street is mostly empty in the daytime. If you go to work, you can be with other women. It’s why highly female offices are like old female spaces. Women spend a ton of money on their appearance, just like in old aristocratic salons. They have charity bake sales, like the WI. They want nice coffee. They don’t want swearing.
I also reckon that it’s why so many women don’t want to work in software. Because that’s not where other women are. That’s what matters. Not the work or high salary. The women in software are mostly more like blokes. They like tech, rather than bake sales. Their personal lives are outside the norm.
You got ambitious, hard working women going to work (which is a good use) and a lot of other women thought they could be richer, but then eventually, it just depleted the streets and a network effect kicked in that if you wanted to talk to women you couldn’t go next door for coffee, but you went to an office.
And then, because people don’t do the total math, or just don’t understand reality, you then start to get the idea of “more women should work”. So, we pump money into universities which is mostly a waste of money with women doing psychology degrees that no-one wants. Women vote for “pro-women” parties, where if you follow the money, what that means is that productive men get taxed more to pay for an enormously bloated public sector full of women doing useless bureaucracy, so there is no net gain over a woman just staying home, looking after the kids and baking, which is actually what most women love doing. Go on… look at the TV shows and movies women love. It’s things like Bake Off, and Strictly which are basically stuff women liked in the 1950s.
I’ve also mentioned how work is portrayed to men and women. Business movies with male protagonists (so aimed at men) are mostly about the work. Like The Big Short, the Tetris movie, Margin Call. The Big Short explains about mortgage bonds, tranches, ratings, CDOs. They are movies about the work. Female protagonist movies aimed at women are about getting a nice office, power dressing, bitchiness, relationships, some sexism at work, maybe.
If something changes which switches some women back to staying home (and maybe remote work is the start of this), you’ll start to see a reverse of the effect grow. That women won’t want to go into an office because they can’t have a gossip and a coffee morning like they can in the neighbourhood.
” but haven’t you missed out a fourth possible cause – contraception? Of those people who are having sex, has the proportion deliberately preventing conception increased?”
Yes I did think of that as I was battering away on the keyboard, but thought better of making my screed of text even longer! The availability and social acceptability of contraception has got to have had a big effect. In essence no one has kids now unless its a 100% active choice. They either use contraception, or if that fails, abortion. One wonders what proportion used to be oopsies.
In London, contraception doesn’t seem to be a big thing with the Diversity. What strikes me the most (apart from London looking like Dhaka, or perhaps Abuja) is the striking number of white and Chinese same-sex couples. It’s Benderama, especially the girls.
Everywhere you look, little perfect Chinese girls holding hands. Which is nicer to look at than the usual alternative, tattooed fat white lezzers. The boys seem either to have given up on girls and got into games or the gym instead, or prance about with the sort of diction, complexion and facial expressions that seem to come with a bellyful of spunk. A bit like these two: https://archive.ph/USZ90
As for women and work, try living in a middle-class Nappy Valley, as I do. The women are socialising all right, in cafes and coffee shops. When they’re not
on their Pelotonsworking from home, that is. Or pretending at the gym: they all wear garish Lycra gym kit.You don’t just get to add the abortions back in tho.
There is some unknown proportion of those compensated by later children that would have not happened were the earliers kept. So a source of declining birth rate for sure but not 1:1 with numbers of abortions.
That said a good 50% of kids in BiG’s circle (people who should be competent at using condoms, pills etc) were happy accidents. The number of unhappy accidents is not known.
Jimmers,
“Smart phones are the current bogey man for everything for the hard of thinking classes. I’m sure I read a thing in Nature(?) that said a lot of the stuff people just know about kids attention spans, mental health etc etc and smart phones isn’t supported by evidence.”
There’s a whole load of things that I would raise that no-one is talking about:-
– kids not smoking. Nicotine is an anti-depressant
– kids being forced to stay in school for longer. Utterly depressing for lots of kids
– Employers not hiring so many kids for Saturday work because of anti-pedo legislation. So kids can’t earn a bit of money
– Online gaming. This is probably worse for men not dating than phones
– Ludicrous amounts of utterly pointless homework rather than kids finding good interests, fingering girls in parks
– Too many people wasting their years at university
– Girls being brainwashed into careers, so not doing filthy stuff to get a husband and babies earlier (which will make them happier)
– Overcompensation in insurance claims and eco bollocks that stops young people getting cars
I think the decline of smoking (and raising of smoking and school leaving from 16 to 18) probably did more damage to kids mental health than anything. Lots of kids hate school, and what got them through it was getting B&H or Silk Cut from 14 to 15. They got a job at 16 which paid them money and had them doing something they liked and they were happier.
Grist, I realise that we are all somewhat gender-fluid these days, but I’m wondering just how, mechanically, a lass can be an onanist… 😉
@Jim – “I cannot believe that a technology that disrupts the face to face interaction of human beings…”
Firstly, your inability to believe is not evidence for anything other than the limitations of your mind but, having said that, I have to agree that the modern technology does have profound effects. The invention of writing has meant that people no longer have to undergo long and arduous journeys to meet experts, so they just don’t care as much about knowledge, and it obviously harms their memory.
You’re all forgetting how much more dangerous it is for men to approach women. Judge it wrong and your life is ruined, plastered all over social media as a perv, if not outright reported to the plod.
There’s the meme of an attractive man in an office saying “you look nice today” to a woman and she’s all swoons and hearts. The frame below has a chunky guy saying the exact same thing and the woman is phoning HR in a panic.
Truth in humour.
Who wants to get #MeToo’d into oblivion.
Much safer, cheaper (and more enjoyable) to stay home and play Call of Duty with your mates online.
You can tell this is happening. Women are complaining that men have withdrawn from dating. Pew research reported that half of young men were not only single but not looking for dates.(Iirc)
Why would you bother to date in the modern world? Look at how many swipes it takes to get a date for the average guy, never mind some nookie. And if you do decide to stick it out and persevere through the time wasters just out for validation or free food, then when you finally get some rumpy puppy and she decides she regrets it in the morning, congratulations, you’re a rapist.
Fuck that.
@Chernyy Drakon: none of that can be true because it involves changes in human behaviour brought about by modern internet and communications technology, and Charles informs us only the small minded could possibly think that.
And if you do decide to stick it out and persevere through the time wasters just out for validation or free food, then when you finally get some rumpy puppy and she decides she regrets it in the morning, congratulations, you’re a rapist.
Its not just the next day, it could be years later when she’s having a menopause mood swing.
“(W)ho as a young person wants to be filmed dead drunk and doing and or saying something stupid and have that plastered all over social media and laughed at (potentially) worldwide?”
Have you never watched YouTube?
Chernyy,
“You’re all forgetting how much more dangerous it is for men to approach women. Judge it wrong and your life is ruined, plastered all over social media as a perv, if not outright reported to the plod.”
“Why would you bother to date in the modern world? Look at how many swipes it takes to get a date for the average guy, never mind some nookie. And if you do decide to stick it out and persevere through the time wasters just out for validation or free food, then when you finally get some rumpy puppy and she decides she regrets it in the morning, congratulations, you’re a rapist.”
Swiping is for mostly for losers. It’s men who don’t want to talk to women, probably don’t like women, don’t want to show them a good time, but just want free whores.. It’s women who are 6s and 7s chasing 9s and 10s. So, the men don’t get any action, because they’re not 9s and 10s. And the women just get fucked and never meet a man, because why would a 9 settle down with a 7? A 9 is going to have fun and dispose of you. The only winners in this game are the men who are 9s and 10s who are knee deep in clunge.
Normal people do IRL dating. Men who get to know women, maybe take them out for a nice dinner. Women who are 7s and pair up with a 7.
The men I know who complain about their situation don’t go to places where women go. Like the gym, or a choir, wine tasting, latin dancing or some charity work. If you’re serious about dating you walk into a beer festival, see that it’s 98% blokes with long beards and decide never to do that again.
Church is a better option than what many men do. Yeah, full of married and old ladies. But married women have daughters, friends “and there’s this nice single man at church”. I reckon part of the problem with a lot of hopeless men is that they leave home, when in the past their mothers would invite Edith from church and her daughter over for tea.
Church works. Where the second Mrs Spud was collected…..
https://www.youtube.com/@hoe_math is worth a watch as it explains the stuff @WB mentions with nice drawings.
@ Tim
There are better examples than Spud: I met Mrs77 in a church I had been attending for several years with many friends – her aunt recommended it to her when she moved to London after graduating.