to be fair on that article, the first paragraph does identify that increasing expenses is also a theory.
I was a bit skeptical at first, but skimming the paper, it's quite well done imo because it uses the initial launch of iPhone on the AT&T 3G network, which wasn't nationwide like we have today, and limited to specific counties, and looks at birthrates for those counties as a sort of controlled experiment.
also, the majority of decline identified is for women 19 to 24, and even then they only estimate smartphones to cause something between 1/3 and 1/2 of the reduction in births in that demographic.
they hypothesize 3 reasons:
it provides improved access to information about contraception and abortion (because access to mobile internet means you can search for things in private that maybe you don't want your parents to know you're researching)
it increases access to pornography, which can be a substitute for sex
it decreases face-to-face time with other people
a lot of births 19 to 24 are unintended, so it's not like these women are consciously choosing to not have children because of the economy (which would be more of a factor around why planned births decrease with in women in 30s etc).
my reading isn't that they are saying it's due to either selfishness or distraction, but it's more about increasing accessibility about information on contraception and abortion
snowghoul
janainaart
vaporwave
areudirty
pixelskylines
tangentwithtanner
2087
stormborns
yousharknotpass
jbbartram-illu
