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The introduction of the iPhone nearly 20 years ago may have had a direct impact on declining birth rates, a new study claims.
This pragmatic study, recently published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, has not been peer-reviewed, but claims that iPhone penetration, which began in 2007, explains a 33% to 52% drop in birth rates among women ages 15 to 44 in the United States.
The study was conducted by Katelyn Myers, an economics professor at Middlebury College, and her stepson, Ezekiel Hooper, a 2025 Middlebury College graduate. This article focuses on where the iPhone was available at launch from 2007 to 2011, when AT&T was the exclusive smartphone carrier. We then analyzed the birth rates in those areas by county.
Myers and Hooper wrote that the birth rate among women in their 20s living in counties with “widespread” AT&T coverage, meaning they had easier access to iPhones, decreased by 14.6 percent between 2007 and 2011. Birth rates for women in their 20s living in counties not served by AT&T decreased by just 10%.
Similarly, the birth rate for teens living in counties with “nearly universal” AT&T coverage fell by 26 percent between 2007 and 2011, while the birth rate for teens living in counties without AT&T coverage fell by 13.8 percent, the authors wrote.
Myers and Hooper understand that iPhone use was not the only reason birth rates declined from 2007 to 2011, but Hooper told USA TODAY that they were surprised by the sheer drastic nature of the study’s findings.
Sarah Hayford, director of the Ohio State University Population Research Institute, said she is open to studying the impact of smartphones on national and international fertility rates, but is skeptical about how the research is narrowly focused and how it will affect the broader conversation about declining global birth rates.
“This is part of how sociologists see the world and part of how economists see the world, but as a sociologist, I’m not particularly interested in explaining this small change in trends over five years,” Hayford told USA TODAY. “I’m more interested in thinking about what the major factors are that drive long-term changes in family formation and childbearing.”
Two additional studies suggest similar results
Myers and Hooper’s publication follows two other studies published by the Social Science Research Network in April and June that suggest smartphones and the “digital revolution” are influencing the way people spend their time, and that smartphones and the “digital revolution” are contributing to a decline in births worldwide. Both studies were authored by University of Cincinnati economics professor Hernan Moscoso Boedo and doctoral candidate Nathan Hudson.
The latter of the two studies found that 43% of the decline in the U.S. birth rate since 2007 can be attributed to digital technologies becoming cheaper (and more accessible) and of higher quality, Hudson told USA TODAY.
“The digital revolution has fundamentally changed the way humans interact with each other, favoring broad, shallow connections at the expense of deep connections that require continued face-to-face investment,” Moscoso-Boedo and Hudson wrote in a recently published study. “As digital technologies redistribute family time, deep relationships are lost, partnerships form less frequently, those that do form become weaker, and conditional fertility declines.”
Through line? Smartphones and other digital technologies also make people want children. They simply replace face-to-face time in building relationships that can lead to children, Hudson explained.
Focused on teen birth rates
All three studies examine declining teen birth rates and argue that technology is changing the way young people interact. A joint study by Hudson and Moscoso-Boedo, published in April, specifically analyzed how smartphones have affected teen birth rates since 2007.
Hudson told USA TODAY that as more teens spend their time online, there is less “unstructured in-person time.” Hudson and Moscoso-Boed’s Teen Birth Rate Study specifically cites the American Time Use Survey, documenting a 44% decline in face-to-face interactions among teens ages 15 to 19 from 2003 to 2019.
Myers and Hooper’s study found the largest decline among teenage girls ages 15 to 19 between 2007 and 2011, ranging from 4.5% to 8%, the research summary states.
“As for why smartphones are causing this decline in teen births, we can’t necessarily explain what they’re doing with their smartphones or what’s causing that change in behavior. All we know is that smartphones are playing a role in it,” Hooper told USA TODAY.
But Myers and Hooper point to several factors taken into account in the study, including a broader increase in search interest in spending time with friends, sexual behavior, psychological distress, and watching pornography and adult films.
But in general, the U.S. teen birth rate has been declining for decades, Hayford said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the teen birth rate decreased by 78% from 1991 to 2021.
“There is pretty good evidence that, at least in the United States, the teen birth rate has been declining over the five to 10 years since about 2007, and the evidence we have suggests that the decline in the teen birth rate is due to… increased use of contraceptives, not decreased sex,” said Hayford of Ohio. “That seems to contradict the mechanism these studies propose, where online socializing is replaced by offline socializing, including sex.”
Is it really possible that smartphones are causing people to have less sex?
These three studies are not the only analyzes of the impact that smartphones and other digital technologies have had on relationships, sex, and fertility around the world. And so does consensus, which seems to have a fundamental impact.
Going back even further, Hayford said advances in communications technology have long had an impact on declining birth rates, citing research done in the 1960s and 1970s that suggested the widespread use of radio and television depicting families with only two children spread the idea that smaller families were desirable. Today, this could translate into parenting content on social media platforms like TikTok, she said.
“The decline in fertility is something that’s happening around the world, in all age groups, and in very different contexts. When we think about explanations for it, we want to think about the big picture and the long term, but we’re not sure that these micro, very focused studies are the most useful way to think about changes and trends,” Hayford said.
Greta Cross is USA TODAY’s national trends reporter. Story ideas? Email her at gcross@usatoday.com.
