Commentary
The fertility crisis appears to be a crisis of connection compounded by smartphones, says Christine Emba for the New York Times.
Texting and video calls - simulacra of in-person conversation - reduce the need to meet in real life. (Photo: iStock/miodrag ignjatovic)
21 Jun 2026 06:00AM
NEW YORK: In case you needed another reason to distance yourself from your smartphone: It may lead to the eventual extinction of the human species.The plummeting birthrate is an arresting metric, and often seems like a stand-in for society’s ills. Nearly 710,000 fewer babies were born in the United States in 2025 than in 2007, and even fewer are predicted for 2026. Increases in women’s education, the high cost of child care and even narcissism have been named as contributing factors, but nothing yet has - or perhaps can - fully explain the decline.It’s tempting to hunt for an archcause to explain it all - if a single culprit can be identified, perhaps a single solution can be too. But in the search for a magic bullet, we risk ignoring less obvious but more viable solutions. Or oversimplifying the problem to the point that we overlook the more nuanced factors at play.A working paper published in the National Bureau of Economic Research this month seemed like the most promising single-factor explanation yet: “Is the iPhone Birth Control? Causal Evidence From AT&T’s 2007-2011 Carrier Monopoly” uses a natural experiment to correlate fertility decline with smartphone use.
