Phones have turned us into awkward, antisocial puppies who can’t handle eye contact.
As someone who grew up with the modern smartphone, I feared that phones were making Gen-Z dumb, antisocial, brain-rot filled robots; are they making us infertile, too?
A landmark study published in The National Bureau of Economic Research titled “Is the iPhone Birth Control? Causal Evidence from AT&T’s 2007–2011 Carrier Monopoly” suggests exactly that. According to research by Caitlin K. Myers and Ezekiel Hooper, the diffusion of the iPhone accelerated the post-2007 U.S. fertility decline and could account for 33 to 52 percent of the drop in the general fertility rate among women aged 15 to 44 between 2007 and 2011.
The study indicates an even larger impact on young women, noting that access to phones contributed to declines of 8.0 percent among ages 15 to 19 and 6.6 percent among ages 20 to 24, whereas older age groups saw only a 1.3 to 3.6 percent decline.
To be clear, the iPhone in and of itself didn’t make women “infertile” — the study argues that it was the spread of the iPhone and constant access to it that affected certain behaviors, ultimately hindering the formation of relationships and partnered intimacy. For example, iPhones decrease face-to-face socializing and increase time spent alone and mobile pornography access.
The study cites that “National-survey evidence on time use and sexual behavior is consistent with the iPhone reducing in-person interactions, increasing pornography use, and reducing sexual frequency.” In other words, phones made us less social; as a result, fewer people date, and fewer babies are born.
Looking at the ages in the statistics, someone could easily shrug at the results, perhaps saying, “So, iPhones decreased teen pregnancy. That’s a good thing, right?” And yes, you would be correct, that is a good thing; however, the reasoning behind why is not. One would hope that the reason teen pregnancy rates decreased is because of proper sex education and an increasing respect for the purpose of sex within the confines of marriage, not because of an inability to speak to one another.
Unfortunately, this study suggests what many Gen Z youth already suspect: Phones have turned us into awkward, antisocial puppies who can’t handle eye contact, so we stand in corners at bars and don’t talk to one another. The number of times I have had a friend ask me, “Why don’t guys come up to girls at the bar anymore?” is more than I can count — I find myself asking the same question. While there are a number of cultural reasons for this (ladies, let’s give the nice guy a chance), one of the big ones is that we’re too busy looking at our phones to make eye contact with each other from across the room.
Maybe I’m giving phones too much credit and Gen Z (myself included) too little, but if this study is right, we should start talking to each other again — and soon.