Smartphones, Births Linked
Studies link smartphone technology to altered relationships and a drop in US birth rates
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The U.S. birth rate has fallen from 2.12 children per woman in 2007 to just 1.62 today — well below the 2.1 needed to keep the population stable, according to CDC. Now, a growing body of research points to an unlikely culprit: the smartphone. Economists argue that the device in your pocket has fundamentally changed how young adults spend time, meet people, and think about having children.
The research is not fringe. Economists at the University of Maryland and Wellesley College have published findings in the Journal of Economic Perspectives linking the post-2007 birth decline to technology — not just to the economy. They estimate roughly 600,000 births are "missing" every year compared to pre-smartphone trends.
Birth Rate Kept Falling Long After the Economy Recovered
Historically, birth rates drop during recessions and bounce back when jobs return. That did not happen after 2008. Unemployment fell, the stock market boomed through the 2010s, but births kept sliding. Researchers call this "the Great Recession mystery." Dr. Melissa Kearney of the University of Maryland and Dr. Phillip Levine of Wellesley College spent years searching for an explanation, according to The New York Times.
Researchers ruled out several usual suspects. Student debt hit hardest among college graduates, but the decline also swept through Americans without degrees. Housing costs were high in cities, but births dropped even in affordable rural areas. Improved contraception played a role, but not nearly enough to explain 600,000 missing births a year.
Smartphones Replaced the Idle Time That Led to Families
The core argument is simple. Before smartphones, young adults had unstructured evening hours. Those hours often led to dates, relationships, and eventually children. The iPhone launched in June 2007 — almost exactly when the birth rate peaked. By 2014, 4G internet had reached nearly every young American, and face-to-face social time among adults aged 18–34 dropped 20%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics American Time Use Survey.
Kearney put it directly: "It's not just that children are expensive; it's that the alternatives to having children have become vastly more engaging and accessible via the device in your pocket," she told The New York Times. The average U.S. adult aged 18–34 now spends 4.8 hours a day on a mobile device, according to eMarketer. In 2026, "digital leisure" time officially surpassed in-person socializing for that age group for the first time ever.
Critics Say Phones Are a Symptom, Not the Cause
Not everyone buys the tech-causal argument. Many young people online push back hard. "We aren't on our phones because we prefer them to babies; we're on our phones because a movie ticket is $20 and a baby is $300,000," reads one viral post on X. Analysts at the Economic Policy Institute argue smartphones are simply what a financially squeezed generation does while waiting for economic stability that never arrives.
Sociologist Dr. Jean Twenge, author of "iGen," lands somewhere in the middle. She argues smartphones have delayed adult milestones across the board. At a 2025 symposium, she said: "If you aren't leaving the house to meet people, you aren't having children." She points out that today's 20-year-olds are less likely to date, drive, or live independently than 20-year-olds were in 2000.
A Shrinking Generation Carries a Trillion-Dollar Price Tag
The long-term costs are stark. The Brookings Institution projects the current birth gap will cost the U.S. economy $1.1 trillion in lost GDP over the next two decades. The Social Security Administration forecasts the "support ratio" — the number of workers per retiree — will fall 25% by 2050. School districts in California and the Northeast already reported a 15% drop in kindergarten enrollment compared to 2015 levels, according to EdWeek.
The U.S. Surgeon General has separately warned of a "social atrophy" crisis, linking loneliness to rising mental health costs. Researchers say both trends — fewer children and more isolation — trace back to the same shift: a generation that turned to screens to meet needs that were once met by other people.
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