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Is it the damn phones?. A new article from one of my favorite energy bloggers suggests that the cratering of fertility rates (which were stable for much of the late 20th century and early aughts) could be driven by the adoption of smartphones. I'm personally rather convinced by this hypothesis, as many of the other explanations given by both people on this forum (status) and in-real life (economics, fear about the future) fall apart with counter examples. You're really telling me that motherhood is now equally low status in the USA, Latin America, the Middle East, and South Africa to depress fertility below 2, or that middle-class young white people are so economically oppressed that they can't have kids? I don't buy it. The smartphone, and its related access to a 24/7, truly global media environment seems to the only material change that could cross so many geographic and cultural lines. There's also a ton of causal mechanisms: hypergamy for instagram baddies, less time interacting with people in person so fewer marriages and thus fewer babies, and atrophied social skills for when interactions do happen in the wild.
Of course a lot of the effects of the smartphone can't be decoupled from high-modernity in general and its culture of extreme convenience and isolation, nor from related technologies like social media and short-form video content. And the groups that seem to avoid this depression in fertility seem to avoid all of these technologies.
I haven't killed my smartphone just yet, but I did delete all my dating apps about a month ago and have stayed off of them for the longest time since I last had a girlfriend. More in person relationships for me in the future I hope.
If it is the phones, I welcome it. Good people should reproduce more when they receive something as awesome as a smartphone. It even lets you find a mate far away who is a great match, basically for free, which was impossible before. The phone is a mirror. The cursed call the mirror cursed when actually the mirror is honest.
I can't tell if this is satire or not, but if not I could not disagree more with this take.
Why would you think it's satire? My point seems substantial enough. Phones are a blank slate and humans are the ones that provide the substance. If you don't like what most phones do, you don't like most people. The phones are not agents.
Presumably because it's coming from the same person who just posted this
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No, but the people who write the code that runs on the phones are.
Tinder is designed to do specific things. Those things appear to be antisocial.
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The medium is the message bro. Our material environment fundamentally changes how we interact with each other. Yes humans are agents that can make decisions, but those decisions are heavily influenced by our environment. No technology is a blank slate, but conditions us for certain behaviors via its design. The smartphone has been engineer very deliberately to alter your behavior. Don't believe me, just ask Tristan Harris. Your logic doesn't follow.
Postmodern marxist pablum.
How does the phone provide influence? Fundamentally, it is a calculator and a radio. Humans freely chose what to compute and transmit on it. You don't like that they chose narcissism and vanity. And you're not willing to accept that the reason is that they are narcissistic and vain.
No, voluntarily downloaded software has been engineered to give consumers what they want. Huge difference.
You sound like my boomer dad. Just resist all social engineering and social pressure and muscle through. What bullshit.
Are you 17? I was into Lacan and « semiotics » at that age, as well as complaining about old Pops. When you get older, you'll realize everything is heritable, just like your dad is trying to tell you through his wisdom.
Lol I am 28, but I did have this argument a lot with my dad when I was 17 in the context of the purchase of a lockbox. I just ignore him now because he's clearly way more addicted to his phone than me.
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