Is the iPhone birth control? Causal evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 monopoly [pdf]

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35310/w35310.pdf

by Terretta • 21 days ago

96 92 21 days ago

Terretta• 21 days ago

TL;DR:

Study claims iPhone contributed to a significant decrease in the birth rate after its release in 2007, when AT&T was the only carrier for the phone, allowing researchers to “isolate an iPhone-specific channel” and compare birth rates in areas with a high AT&T customer base to competitors' areas:

“The diffusion of the iPhone explains 33-52 percent of the decline in the general fertility rate among women aged 15-44.”

Authors go on to muse that “as modern smartphones diffused, time spent with friends in person and sexual activity fell sharply alongside rising consumption of pornography, a possible substitute for partnered sex.”

Nothing to do, of course, with AT&T’s customer base at the time being urban, well-educated, and white, or that U.S. birth rate in the youngest groups had already been falling before 2007 with the trend continuing during study period.

dash2• 20 days ago

The authors do address this issue, by reweighting their treatment and control counties on observable covariates. But I agree with you that this isn’t the causally watertight research design that economists usually strive for.

It might be worthwhile using local lightning strikes as an instrument for 3G coverage. Others have done this, but not for fertility afaik. But the lightning strike data costs about $1000.

pestatije• 21 days ago

this comes to show that sex is just entertainment and it is being crowded out from all sides

Mikhail_Edoshin• 20 days ago

Everything is entertainment in the modern world.

On the other hand, as William James wrote, one of definite characteristics of a religious experience is seriousness. "All is not vanity."

staticshock• 20 days ago

There's a subgenre of dystopian sci-fi where the premise is that reality in general is destined to be eclipsed by matrix-like hyper-realities, and that people will vastly prefer those and cede reality to whoever's left.

I guess the way this could work itself out is that if you prefer a hyper-reality, your genes do not pass on, and someone else's do, and within some number of generations we bounce back in response to evolutionary pressure.

I learned a fun fact in a recent interview of David Reich (by Dwarkesh):

Every mutation that can occur does occur. There are eight billion people in the world. There are maybe 30 new mutations every generation, so that’s 240 billion new point mutations every generation. There are only three billion DNA bases in the genome, so every mutation that can occur does occur about 100 times every generation. We’re not mutation-limited anymore.

https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/david-reich-2

fragmede2• 20 days ago

However, medical care isn't evenly distributed, neither is education, and there's tons of cultural differences as well. The mutations happen, but if the next Einstein or Ramanujan dies in a war-torn ghetto, did the mutation really happen?

initramfs4• 20 days ago

Interesting. It hadn't occurred to me that The Matrix would become more ubiquitous, but it seems there are plenty of mechanisms from avoiding that. People read novels 200 years ago, and i imagine that was a bit of blue pilling.

epihelix• 20 days ago

In this modern world where highly effective birth control is cheap and straightforward, we really need to stop equating fertility rates with levels of sexual activity. You can have plenty of sex and not have a child; you can have very little sex and have a substantial number of children.

It's fascinating to me how personal choice never seems to enter into these discussions, even in relatively highly educated, first-world democracies. I actively chose to not have kids -- it was not an accidental by-product of iphones or any other proposed environmental factor.

XorNot• 20 days ago

Thank you I was about to post this.

The most absolutely infuriating thing about fertility rate discussions is the conclusion everyone draws of "obviously people aren't having enough sex".

I was sexually active for over 15 years before having exactly 1 child when I decided to.

The limiting factor in the number of children I have has at no point been the frequency of intercourse itself.

swat535• 19 days ago

Unless you have surgically implemented birth control (such as vasectomy), the pregnancy chance logically increases with higher rate of sexual activity with multiple partners.

Mistakes happen. Birth control is not 100% effective.. condoms break, women forget to take the pill, etc.

Of course it goes without saying you have a much higher chance of pregnancy if you're not using any form of birth control.

epsteingpt• 20 days ago

You need to resubmit this with a better headline:

People prefer scrolling to sex enough that using the iPhone explains up to half of the U.S. birth decline since 2011.

sigmoid10• 20 days ago

Also should note that this is a working paper and not peer reviewed. Working papers are circulated to invite comments and discussion. Until some experts confirm their methodology I wouldn't take any of this for granted.

anal_reactor• 20 days ago

Seriously though, I'm gay so if I want I can literally go to a sex club and have sex, but scrolling is 100 times better than sex with a random person.

IMO the problem isn't that we choose scrolling over sex, but that having a smartphone makes independence easier, which removes opportunities and motivation to meet people. People talk to each other mainly when they need to solve practical problems. Remove practical problems and you remove social interaction.

I remember clearly that when my ex fixed my bike I had a strong impulse of being attracted to him. But realistically, when my bike is broken, I'd rather take it to a bike shop than ask someone for help and then do favors in exchange.

tornikeo• 20 days ago

Surely the electromagnetic radiation from iPhone must be disorienting the storks.

jadamson• 20 days ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48444543

jimbob45• 20 days ago

I don’t want to be flippantly dismissive but surely there was a certain other event in 2008 that caused many families to reconsider the financial wisdom of starting a family.

jraby3• 20 days ago

They compared AT&T users with an iPhone (the only place you could get an iPhone) to users with other carriers.

Since people using other carriers also experienced 2008, it's not that.

zarzavat• 20 days ago

Even if you control for age and wealth, the people who used iPhones in 2008, i.e. tech hipsters, are obviously different in tangible ways from the people who didn't use iPhones in 2008. It's not possible to prove causality from that.

benj111• 20 days ago

Ah but maybe having an iPhone causes you to be more exposed to financial crashes.

Or maybe the type of person that buys iPhones also spends too much on other items causing them to be over leveraged when a financial crash does occur.

serial_dev• 20 days ago

Or, the kind of people who bought iPhones in 2008 were a different subset of the population than those who didn’t and as such they have different opinions and preferences when it comes to family and kids?

With that said, I can also see that infinite entertainment and infinite information makes you deprioritize having children.

But it’s far from proof, this study. It’s more like “I found some numbers that support my already existing opinion, so let’s run with that”.

jojobas4• 20 days ago

No financial chicanery is good enough a reason to end your line.

saghm3• 20 days ago

Maybe some people realized that they could wait a few years and still have kids later, and others didn't think about having kids purely though the lens of evolutionary biology.

moezd• 20 days ago

correlation vs causation https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

saghm3• 20 days ago

Alternately (and appropriately related to smart phones and biology): https://xkcd.com/925/

bpodgursky• 20 days ago

Can you at least pretend to have read the article in question?

jdw64• 20 days ago

What makes an iPhone better than Durex is that you can take it out of your pocket and everyone will envy you. In that sense, I think it's an envy-inducing contraceptive tool.

vachina• 20 days ago

Porn became easier to access. Men became less horny.

sirnicolaz• 20 days ago

never

mrweasel• 20 days ago

That might only be part of the issue. There has been some "experiments" where people are asked if they'd prefer to give up their phone for some period of time, or go without sex in that same period. Women were more likely to prefer their phones over sex and other studies show that women generally spend more time on their phones than men does.

frollogaston4• 20 days ago

The men part doesn't really matter because birth rates are determined more by women's behaviors than anything else. And the paper does focus on women.

  Overall, the diffusion of the iPhone explains 33–52% of the decline in
  the general fertility rate among women aged 15–44.

desterothx• 20 days ago

You're right, he should have said people became less horny

hahahaa• 19 days ago

Citation pls because common sense says it takes two to tango.

akimbostrawman• 19 days ago

at this point the number of young men wanting a family is higher than women. meanwhile there are more straight women having sex / in a relationship than men, how that is possible when the population ratio is almost 50/50 i leave as a exorcise for the reader...

misiek08• 20 days ago

404

throw939303• 20 days ago

It is "birth control" but in sort of opposite way. People are now much better informed, thanks to internet and devices like iphone. They do not have to relly on state education (that wants more babies) and popular shows like Friends.

State founded school is not going to tell you it costs $1200000 to raise baby, or you have 50% chance it will be taken away.

It will also push stats made in lab controlled conditions, and gloss over unreliability of such medications in real life (like if you would skip a pill for a few days).

Failure rate of birth control in normal life is around 10% per year (if you drink, forget to take pill at very exact time, use antibiotics). So there would be about chance 50% to get unwanted baby over years. Well informed person will not make such mistake.

Edit: about the cost

I said the "cost is", not that they are "spending it". There is lost opportunity, lost salary, lost investments, inflation...

It is not 18, more like 24 years.

Let's do some some math, take $600 rent over 18 years = $129,600. With 5% annual rent increase $202k. If you would reinvest that rental income with 5% yearly return $304k!!!

Stay at home mum for 5 years, at $60k = $300k. If you invest that into retirement account when baby would go to school, for 12 years at 5% yearly return it is $538k

Forgeties795• 20 days ago

You’re just making up numbers

throw939303• 20 days ago

Well, lets buy a house, car.. wife should stay at home for couple of years, education, health care...

trhway6• 20 days ago

Actually raising a child costs more than $1.2M - just $20K/year invested in S&P500 over the last 20 years would have grown to more than $1.2M. Or those $20K/year could be spend on the child. And $20K/year is pretty low.

tengbretson2• 20 days ago

it costs $1200000 to raise baby

What exactly are you planning to do with all that money anyway? Consume things?

trhway6• 20 days ago

retire? Retiring only on Social Security is pretty tough, and $1.2M would provide like $4K/month income which on top of Social Security may allow for modest lifestyle in some low COL area.

Wrt. the original post i'd agree with GP - better information/education is probably the most powerful birth control.

throw939303• 20 days ago

Nothing? Because I do not have that money!

lstodd3• 20 days ago

The right question is "to what age".

Get all McKinsey and calculate a TCO of a baby from conception to end-of-uni. $1.2M is low-end even for eastern EU, it's more like twice that.

0-to-23. $100K/year. This what a baby costs.

Aurornis• 20 days ago

State founded school is not going to tell you it costs $1200000 to raise baby

Completely wrong. Not even plausible. You think every family is spending $67K per year, per baby, until they're 18? What?

initramfs4• 20 days ago

The funny thing is that there was a study or an article suggesting Apple users got more sex than non Apple users.

ido• 20 days ago

Android an even more effective birth control then?

initramfs4• 20 days ago

Hard to say. In 2007-2011, during the time of that study, I was using Nokia Symbian phones.

ptidhomme• 20 days ago

Is porn birth control ? Yes it is. But why is porn free and ubiquitous ?

Surely there's an enormous amount of money behind it, but where's the ROI ?

tossandthrow• 20 days ago

I'd say that smart phones are a bigger problem than porn.

If you are in the category that would sit and watch porn in the public, then you already wouldn't need birth control.

cubefox3• 20 days ago

This is a pretty mind blowing result. Moreover, this was before the really addictive apps were available, like TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts. So it probably has gotten even worse since then.

sigbeta• 20 days ago

positive correlation between iphone users being more virgin than others

Animats• 20 days ago

This study uses iPhone usage and birthrates at the county level. The rural/urban distinction for counties has a strong correlation with wideband cellular data coverage, and that effect was even stronger in the early days of the iPhone when cellular data coverage was both weaker and more expensive.

Apple has better data. They know who has an iPhone, and they almost certainly know if they have kids. That info is probably available via ad brokers.

frollogaston4• 20 days ago

Here's an anecdote that today's kids are too young to have experienced, but their parents also weren't around for it. I was in middle school when the iPhone became popular. It was pretty sudden, so the social effect was obvious. Their parents probably bought them iPhones because they were addicted too, but it's different when you're in school. Since then have been hoping for a day when this gets undone.

cubefox3• 19 days ago

It was pretty sudden, so the social effect was obvious.

What was this social effect like, according to your memory?

frollogaston4• 19 days ago

Kids stopped socializing. School bus was suddenly very orderly, cause everyone was playing with their iPhones. And it wasn't only an initial shock that went away, but kept settled in as iPhones got better over time.

Sometimes I hear today that kids without phones get ostracized because social circles have moved online. That wasn't a thing yet, I guess because it was an awkward period for messaging. AIM group chats were kinda popular before, but iPhones didn't support that well, and group texts either didn't exist (pre-MMS) or were really bad. Facebook was popular but wasn't really used for messaging.

solumunus• 19 days ago

In my experience it didn’t seem that impactful at the time. The social effect of early Facebook was pretty minor, not that much different to the MSN chats that came before it. I think it’s social media content discovery algorithms specifically that caused the sea change. If we exclude modern social media life really wouldn’t be that different to how it was before smart phones. Obviously I understand smart phones are what enabled this…

est• 20 days ago

I think the cause is mobile phones giving more people exposure to social networks

https://blog.est.im/2026/stdin-09

ppl are now having better options than raising a baby.

Qem3• 20 days ago

ppl are now having better options than raising a baby.

It gets me beffudled people actually think addiction to the virtual crack of social media is a better option.

Shitty-kitty• 20 days ago

I don't know if it's "birth control" but it will definitely let you know that "Plan B" is not considered "pregnancy-termination" it is still legal in all States.

throawayonthe• 20 days ago

i'm confused what this is in reference to, but yes, levonorgestrel emergency contraceptives can't be called pregnancy termination by even the most extreme definition because it works by delaying ovulation, does not impact implantation and does nothing during/post ovulation/ and 'conception'

jack1689• 19 days ago

Wondering if it's just the iphone and the fact that we have it always in our pockets or the amount of "radiations" we are exposed it constantly at home at the office tbh

Is the iPhone birth control? Causal evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 monopoly [pdf]

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