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

Terretta

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.

pestatije

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

epsteingpt

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.

wileydragonfly

Pound that monkey hole

tornikeo

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

jadamson

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

jimbob45

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.

moezd

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

jdw64

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.