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look at my fourth estate dawg 💀

Nobody is having kids because nobody can afford anything you dumb rich fucks

This is a lazy excuse made by a bunch of people unwilling to confront the difficulties of how expensive it is to even breathe air

Came here to post this, thank you for saving me the effort.

Except in the 60s. They went into hibernation the , I guess.

This place just doesn't pass the smell test for me. Too much pain, too much suffering, too much evil. Why would I bring a smaller more vulnerable version of myself to a place like that 🧐.

I've noticed an increase in poor journalism from NPR at the same time the birth rate is declining. So therefore, NPR is responsible for the declining birth rate.

That doesn't sound very provocative to me

lol. No.

Study claims the economy recovered and birth rates didn't go up, and concludes that the recession couldn't have caused it. Gee, I wonder how much of the economic recovery went to people of child bearing age?

repubs were right to defund you

Gosh, I wonder if something happened to the economy right around when smartphones went mainstream

I will never put much stock in a “study” that is basically “we ran statistical models using unrelated data sets until we found something we could call a correlation.” Makes for a great click-bait headline though

Short answer: no. Longer and correct answers have already been posted here.

Yeah, definitely, it's anything OTHER than massive wealth inequality through sequestration and hoarding, and it has nothing to do with a near complete lack of social welfare services and decreasing real wage gain.

One note; If someone makes a hypothesis and then finds data to confirm their theory, it’s not an experiment. Hell it’s barely publishable. This is good television, not good reporting.

Me in 1920s mid-Atlantic accent: “Are newspapers causing a drop in birth rates?”

Family planning

Has nothing to do with phones you morons, it costs 50 bucks to just leave the house now, tons of people can’t afford to have kids

Perhaps smartphones are a factor, but it's really freaking simple. When people have means of controlling unwanted pregnancies, people only have kids when they are optimistic about the future. No one wants their kids to lead worse lives than they did, monetarily or politically.

Relevant xkcd xkcd.com/925/ (cancer causes cell phones.)

CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION! Drownings are highly correlated to higher ice cream consumption. Eating ice cream causes drownings? No. People eat more ice cream in the heat of summer, which is the same time of year that people swim. Fertility is down because of economic factors!

No. Reality is.

Do we not learn that correlation does not mean causation?

No.

People being broke is the reason for lower birth rates. Also the cost of even having a baby, let a lone raising a baby. Why perpetuate this nonsense?

Maybe it‘s the fucked up Environment, the falling income Rates, the growing inequality and just a lot of people sick of raising new Taxpayers for the overrich trump- epstein class criminal clans of today?

Is this a thinly veiled code for "we must keep women isolated so they don't run across feminist thought online and don't know any better but to accept poor treatment from men" or what?

They're isolationists, it's true. I see families at the restaurant: a couple with an only child. All 3 absorbed in their cell phone. They don't talk, they don't share the moment, the context. If they don't even talk how can they create complicity erotic desire and maybe they'll have another child?

something something correlation something causation

Elon will wig out when he learns that precious white sperms are not finding their intended targets due to tech.

In AI Dystopia, Smartphone have BABY without YOU.

I also love how every one of these "The Plummeting Birthrates!!" articles has to admit a lot of it is from finally beating the Teen Pregnancy epidemic that was the rare Reasonable Moral Panic for decades.

Not sure anyone was arguing that, but you do you.

Almost no one outside of the terminally online think this way. Everyone didn’t turn into an antinatalist! I know lots of people in their 20s and 30s who are delaying or not having kids because they simply can’t afford it. They want kids, they can’t have them or they’re having one instead of two.

FFS do better.

Oh? Is it new technology making people not fuck or the fact that the economy has been fucked since exactly the same point the new technology came out and the world has gotten worse or worse or worse to the point that the apocalypse seems to be happening in our life times. Probably the technology

You wasted bits and bytes for this?

It's probably a contributing factor, though I don't think it's the ONLY factor or even the biggest

"Are ice cream sales causing drownings? A provocative new paper explores the persistent rise in drownings as more and more ice cream is sold."

This feels like looking at a trend at the 100 year mark and deciding something that happened at that point caused the trend, when it had been happening the whole time

Yeah this is sort of what I mean by it being bad online discourse. There are several intersections when it comes to income, work structure, society and social methods of social reproduction, infrastructure and access to services, media, and the formal economy

Spurious correlations and other propaganda techniques.

Oh good we looped back around to Devin Nunes bitching about millenial iphones and avocado toast. IT'S STILL THE AFFORDABILITY, STUPIDS

A new working paper explores: blaming literally anything other than economics

Couldn't have anything to do with everything being terrible? Jobs scarce, wages too low, interest rates & high prices making home ownership impossible, corrupt courts and government taking away rights and protecting pedophiles, average life span getting shorter...but it's smartphones???

Pretty sure it's the utter insanity of a country imploding that's dragging down birth rates.

This, and fodder for the epstein islands we don't even know about, is why they're so "pro-life." My pat response to pro-lifers who say "have the baby and put it up for adoption" is, "why, so you people can eat them?" This is how they deserve to be spoken to.

Yeah, if iPhones didn’t cost $1k and life didn’t require you to have a smartphone, maybe people could afford kids. No one wants to bring kids into this reality anyway. Mine are angry at me for it.

This is not a bad thing!!! Why are we twisting the data that reducing teen pregnancies is bad??

Perhaps if childcare wasn’t the same cost as a mortgage payment there would be more children? BuH “provocative”

If you keep posting absolute drivel like this I’m going to stop donating money to your obviously bullshit organization. ITS THE WEALTH INEQUALITY, STUPID. ITS THE FUCKING WEALTH INEQUALITY.

It sounds like a crazy thesis but, as we've seen, smartphones are a great enabler of social dysfunction-like behavior. Anyone who's had a teenager with one, and compares their interactions to that same time growing up, can see that play out. So....who knows? I don't think they are helping.

Smart phones opened the gates and made ubiquitous an addictive, attention economy that tanked social standards. This device and the social media data rapists who, without accountability, allow a toxic cesspool of disinformation and abuse to fester on their platforms, are a scourge of modern times.

Did they take into account a war that lasted 20 years with many young men and women wounded, killed or mentally incapacitated. Does the government give a rats ass what coming back from war involves as far as fitting back into society?

When was "16 and pregnant" on MTV?

Lmfao.

Maybe. But the country’s death spiral probably has a lot more to do with it.

This is embarrassing. Correlation does not equal causation. At some point, y'all will have to stop ignoring things like social determinants of health, the fact that our society is basically a flaming Dumpster on a badly designed rollercoaster track, and that climate change = bad for families.

Are headlines responsible for people having fewer words?

Oh dear… correlation is not causation.

It can’t be stagnant wages, sky high costs of daycare, unaffordable housing, inflation continuing to rise, losing access to healthcare. It’s gotta be the phones! For fucks sake NPR. What the fuck is this?

Yes, rising maternity rates as well.

Well a smartphone is cheaper than a child, I’ll give you that.

The iPhone came out in 2007. I wonder what happened in 2008 and has continued to be shitty for people?🤔

Lack of money, social care, and a dystopian society where all we do is work while the Epstein Class enjoys luxury is why we aren't having kids.

1) it is too expensive and risky (for the kids) 2) the 1% are hell-bent on destroying the middle-class and turning our planet into an unlivable cinder by cutting public investment in everything ; so that fossil-fuel Billionaires can become trillionaires. 3) who decides what is too few kids?

You’re gonna write this same article for legalized gay marriage, aren’t you? Then trans people. Instead of the actual issue.

Do phones make it way to expensive to start a family?

Perhaps they should compare what giving birth and childcare cost 20 years ago to now. I know several couples that would love to start having kids or have more kids but they can’t afford it. But sure, blame electronics.

This is incorrect. The first iPhone carrier was Cingular not ATT.

Man, I wonder what other generation-defining, life-altering event with long-term repercussions could have happened right around the same time the iPhone was released.

This sounds like taking a wrong conclusion and falsely building around it

hey check this out: www.tylervigen.com/spurious-cor...

I really expected better of you, NPR. I'm not mad, just disappointed.

I wonder if anything else was different two decades ago...Nah, the world was probably identical, except for phones.

Why do you want more teenagers getting pregnant, paedo?

Dude, what the fuck NPR? Are there no real journalists left?

what the fuck is this bullshit clickbait

Surely the story is that weird nonces are sad the teen pregnancy rate is dropping?

I’m all in favor of families making choices, but fascists always push (white) families to have as many kids as possible. And vice versa for nonwhites (higher infant mortality etc).

bsky.app/profile/celi...

bsky.app/profile/celi...

Well, I for one wouldn't want to have sex with someone whose attention was always on the phone.

idk I think it's the fascism and skyrocketing costs

No

NPR doing cover for pedophiles.

🤦🏼‍♂️ It's not the phones! FFS.

It because EVERYONE IS BROKE!

*loud, wet farting noises*

this is a white supremacist talking point

Yes! The great drop of fertility rate started 1950 just when iPhone was introduced. It is not a coincidence!

And before Smartphones, it was Rock n Roll, and video games, and the Internet

NPR dipping its toes into pronatalism like the fascist weirdos they’ve become.

Knock it off with the natalism

Do Do you guys even engage with reality

Some people think it’s inconvenient to have children.

If it’s because more people can see how impossible it is to raise a kid in the year of our Lord 2026 and they go, “Yeah, nope, I’m out,” then, sure.

Rage bait?

It’s actually because everyone is poor

Surely nothing else happened almost two decades ago that might be affecting this.

Age range for this (*working*) paper is 15-44. The biggest drop is in the 15-19 age cohort and in general reflects an overall drop for under-30 with a recent pick-up for over-30. Teenagers are having fewer babies and women overall are delaying birth? This is "provocative?"

To normal people, no. To the rich and their mouthpieces, yes. Teen girls who aren't stuck impoverished with babies get an education. Educated women lean progressive. Poor mothers with poor children = lots of low wage workers.

Hey this is a more complete list of things that happened in the 21st century, it looks like yours is simply: "2007 - iPhone launched."