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Phones may be expensive, but children are even more so.

i mean, i made the decision long before i knew i couldn't have them, that the world is already going to burn in my lifetime, let alone subjecting a child to that ecosystem collapse. i don't think i'm unique in that viewpoint in the slightest.

Because the rise of fascism is being masked by fascists and they have an interest in telling the masses that everything is their fault

We greatly reduced unplanned teen pregnancy in that time. It's not the damn phones.

Tl;dr - no

No. Now please delete this story forever

anything happen 1 year later that might indicate this is a correlation?

Who gives a shit, isn't that what all the abstinence-only education was for?

Y'all aren't creampieing bc ur always on that damn phone

I have never tried to have sex with my phone but it seems like it would be hard to have kids that way

You yourself run an entire blog on this! www.npr.org/series/65178...

Wow another right wing framed story. It’s because sex education works and teen pregnancy is down. Women are still having kids but later It’s also because the oligarchs you deep throat hoard all the money I really hope to see you fail in my lifetime but suck will probably float you as oppo control

☺️

it's the cost of everything needed for survival are you people even alive?

Capitalism plus climate collapse = less babies.

See, a big part of the elon musk 14 words horseshit is that the breeding war is supposed to already be underway, and white people are just supposed to have so many uneducated babies they can't afford, because we're about to have just *so* many war casualties. Why aren't ya'll fuckin already?!

Remind us what else happened two decades ago as many millennials had already exited high school into the real world.

Correlation. 🤦‍♂️

bsky.app/profile/shel...

PC for Nazi

People aren't having kids because no one can afford to and the world is dying because of pedophile rich white men. Its not that hard to understand.

Exactly. I grew up in a single parent household and food insecurity was a frequent thing. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, and I definitely wouldn't want to bring a child into that situation.

Are yall stupid over there? Or just willfully ignorant?

you could say that about the stagnant national wage because the federal standard wage last increased nearly two decades ago and you'd be closer to causation, too

You say that like it's a bad thing...

Don't you teach your reporters the difference between causation and correlation?

Pirates👇🏻/global warming👆🏻 May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage! 🍜 RAmen

Which in a way is true I guess.

internet/schools, in a sense my school for example has sex education... I have no idea about the schools my parents went to, but they didn't have me and my sister unplanned :P also it depends, some schools still don't have good or any sex education

Interesting where you see the sharpest decline

Why didn’t anyone tell me before

It’s the fact that the author of this dumb article gets paid more than like 90% of workers in this country.

What a silly hypothesis The reasons are blatantly obvious 🤓

it's true. i would rather have a computer than children

Fuck you

Or, and just throwing this out there, it might have to do with the entire world falling apart, the burning forests, the lack of breathable air and clean water, all the wars, the gun violence, and that none of us can afford to live while billionaires hoard all the resources. But sure, phones...

Absolutely nothing to do with the cost of living! Not at all! *scrabbles around for something else to blame - sunspots, migratory butterflies, Nicholas Cage movies, the colour people choose to paint their bedrooms - ANYTHING but sorting out proper taxation of the wealthy*

“Provocative” in the same way it’s fucking brain dead. Why bother putting out these stupid fuck articles when it’s always the same response you jerkoffs.

Or it could be the incredible income inequality most Americans face, a shit poor healthcare system and the lack of resources to help new parents.

When I was five I suggested to my parents that people should use grass as money and then nobody would have to be poor. That analysis was about on par with this.

Is NPR simple?

I aint got no fuckin money NPR

How hard is it to admit that no one has money for jack shit anymore and kids are expensive as hell due to no governmental support? This isn't rocket science. It's money, it's that simple.

stopped listening to NPR years ago and I see im still not missing very much

Hey there Did you know that ice cream causes shark attacks, because there is usually an uptick of shark attacks at the same time that there is an uptick of ice cream consumption. I'm sure there are 0 confounding variables in this statement I have just made.

Stupid fucking article. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteri...

WE! HAVE! NO! MONEY! Problem solved!

And if it gets really annoying, you can also set it to silent.

This is why we haven’t taken steps to be foster parents. In the U.S., unless you make a family business out of having 4 foster kids, the programs don’t provide enough aid to offset the housing when you’re not already housing your own kids too. After surviving foster care, I would never do 3+

No, of course not.

The reality is a systemic shift where digital convenience and entertainment are actively displacing the biological and social foundations of family formation. Resulting Judgement: (-0.5, -1.0) — Lesser Evil

Oh fuck off, NPR.

Maybe your next article will outline how infant mortality rates are typically higher in red states because Republican voters spend more time on their cell phones.

How freaking stupid is this? C'mon, get a grip. Who would bring a child into *this* economy? Post hoc ain't propter hoc and never has been that simplistic.

Are increasing NPR revenues causing people to have fewer children?

You dumb dummies

💯

Wasn’t that around the time Facebook became popular? Have you seen the latest posts going around? Who’s got time for the old In & Out burger?

A limeade is $7 guys.

UK Birth Rates were the lowest recorded in 2025 the most watched TV show was Pegga Pig DEATH TO PEPPA!!!

I'm sure it has nothing to do with the rise of fascism, the death of the planet, and the unaffordability of living

www.tylervigen.com/spurious-cor...

Have you read this? Because it's a better explanation than your ridiculous article: bsky.app/profile/sail...

Couldn’t be that people don’t want to start families in this shithole country. Nah.

I would expect you to understand the difference between causation and correlation. It's just because we're broke and the world keeps getting more fucked up. I guess you are pretty close to the mark in that the smartphone is a symbol of the actual problem...

Weak

Yeah I was listening to this yesterday and this might be your most out-of-touch work yet The GDP is not an accurate reflection of economic conditions for the average American. You might know that if you talked to the average American. I’d love kids, my phone is not the reason I don’t have kids.

Damn this is some garbage, you guys really aren't sending your best anymore

Clearly couldn't have anything to do with the previous two decades of worsening economic conditions

It’s definitely not because women can have their own bank accounts and careers now. Nor the fact that it’s entirely unaffordable to sustain life these days. Nor the thought of adding more people to a dying planet. Definitely the phones.

People are poor, NPR

"Are living wages and house prices to blame? Nope. Smart phones!"

Better get RFKJr on this matter.

I have a rock that keeps tigers away.

In the sense that smartphones have made certain people a lot of money, and that money has not returned to the folks that creepy people insist have to have more children.

Nobody has a house, job security, or enough money, but yeah I’m sure it’s because we’re all busy playing angry birds.

News at eleven: Economists are actually morons practicing a pseudoscience. Real science gives a much better picture, ask a climate scientist why millennials and younger aren’t having children. Hint: who wants to curse someone with that bleak future!?

In 2008 millions of people lost their homes, millions more lost their job. Since then, our economic outlook hasn't bounced back. Credit card debt, inflation, food costs & homelessness skyrocketed when Biden was in office. But yeah, it's the smart phones. Do you people listen to how stupid you sound?

We can’t afford it, assholes.

Kids are fucking expensive and most of us are still trying to recover from our own trauma.

Now do whats causing people to buy fewer houses. I bet it'll help with why they rent also having kids.

No. It's because no one can afford to live. Living through the country's Fascist self destruction doesn't help either.

npr why are you like this?

This garbage is indicative of why we ended our sustaining membership during Trump Season 1. People are poor. The world is in shambles. Our government is actively trying to kill us. And you have the gall to suggest smartphones are to blame? Just... no words for how far you've fallen.

You don't have to publish this garbage.

Gosh I wonder if anything else has shifted in the past 20 years. We're all rooting for you, NPR, and you continue to not meet the moment. Fucking embarrassing.

“Provocative” is a helluva way to spell “bullshit”.

By "provocative" did you mean "stupid and flawed"?

People tryina think of any other reason people don’t want to bring another human into this world besides THE OBVIOUS REASONS.

The Alvin & the Chipmunks movie also came out in 2007, so I think that might have a lot to do with it.

This is kind of embarrassing y'all. My toddler's splash pad has a deeper look.

Did the Ellisons also buy npr?

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest it's not the cell phones.

You are stupid for writing this.

Look, I know everyone is going to blame affordability but people in countries with excellent social programs are also choosing to have way fewer kids and I think the thing is, there are a million reasons. But smartphones? nawwwwwwwwww

BECAUSE WE'RE FUCKING POOR!

Hear me out on this: maybe, just maybe it’s because many women like myself are becoming childfree because they know they’d have to do the brunt of the work AND everything is unaffordable nowadays.

L O L Ridiculous.

This is very, very stupid.

bsky.app/profile/lega...

Is that really a problem? Who says conscious existence is a gift? Maybe enough people have recognized it for the inconvenience it is

I graduated in 2007. Clearly nobody wants to bring children into a world where I don't have to do homework.

There's a place for the smartphone in the pantheon of modern life that fucks with our heads and rips societies apart.

My dad was raised by a single dad who adored them but worked night and day to provide. There are three of us. His siblings- one or none. If someone doesn’t want children or cannot provide for them, why have them? Maybe this generations isn’t selfish- maybe they are wiser and more discerning?

Hey NPR was there anything ELSE that happened right around January 2007? Maybe something a little over a year later? With mortgages, maybe?