Are iPhones contributing to America’s falling birth rate?

Falling birth rates are an ongoing problem across the globe, and one new study suggests a possible contributor: smart phones.

Key Takeaways:

• A new study linkssmart phone usage to lower birth rates.

• AT&T was the exclusive carrier for iPhones for five years. In counties with the highest prevalence of AT&T iPhone usage, birth rates were found to have the greatest decreases.

• Based on the NBER study, the future of our country's fertility depends on our ability to harness screen use.

The Details:

From 2007-2011, AT&T was the exclusive cellular carrier for the brand-new iPhones. In 2023, America’s birth rate, 1.62 children per woman of child-bearing age, was far below the replacement level of 2.1 children/woman. The two may be connected more than most people might think, according to a provocative new research study which found that, as smart phone usage increases, birth rates tend to decrease. 

That conclusion led CNN’s Michael Smerconish to rhetorically ask, “Is the iPhone the most effective form of birth control ever invented?” during a June 27th interview with Caitlin Myers, professor of economics at Middlebury College and co-author of the study. 

Across the country, counties where AT&T iPhone prevalence was highest were the same places where birth rates dropped the most, especially for teens and twenty-somethings.

That’s according to a June 2026 research study released by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Myers and her co-author — Ezekiel Hooper, her 24-year-old stepson — overlaid county-by-county fertility data with AT&T smartphone broadband coverage. The study examined data from June of 2007, when the iPhone went on sale, through February of 2011, when Verizon users were first able to use a version of the iPhone 4.

Teens and women in their twenties experienced drops in childbearing, while births to women in their thirties didn’t trend upward as would have been expected, given general trends toward later childbearing.

Myers and Hooper estimated that 20-35% of the birth rate decrease in women aged 15-29 was due to smartphone use. Similarly, they posited that smartphone use lowered the expected birth rate increase in 30-44 year old women by 81-84%. 

The researchers wrote:

Overall, the diffusion of the iPhone explains 33–52% of the decline in the general fertility rate among women aged 15–44. National-survey evidence on time use and sexual behavior is consistent with the iPhone reducing in-person interactions, increasing pornography use, and reducing sexual frequency.

Zoom In:

Myers explained that when economists observe declining birth rates, they ask:

[w]hether births are falling because people are just choosing to have fewer children, they want to have fewer children, or whether there’s something else going on where they’re just not as likely to form relationships or get pregnant.

And one of the clues there is that when you ask people the number of children they’d like to have, the number they give is larger than the number they’re ending up having. Some piece of this story is about people not even achieving their desired fertility.

Disturbingly, the total fertility rate of 1.62 children per woman in 2023 represents a birth freefall, with a 2% decline in births in just one year. 

America’s birth dearth isn’t "no big deal," as dismissive mainstream references to “pronatalism” would seem to suggest. Our ongoing “demographic winter” has real, serious consequences for the whole nation, as this 2008 documentary presciently, if sometimes dramatically, identified. 

As the NBER study observed:

This demographic shift touches every aspect of American life—from the viability of Social Security and Medicare to the future of economic growth, from housing markets to educational systems, from military recruitment to political representation. The babies not being born today represent missing workers, consumers, taxpayers, and innovators of tomorrow.

The Big Picture:

Smerconish pointed out that in 2008, the economy collapsed. Since births tend to decrease when the economy dips, could that be the real driver of falling birth rates? Is a housing market crash or other marker of economic instability to blame? 

As Myers pointed out, researchers can control for or account for these kinds of factors. And when those analyses were done, Myers noted, the iPhone-birth rate connection remained. 

During an interview with The New York Times opinion writer and author of "Rethinking Sex," Christine Emba, Smerconish summarized, “If you’re on your phone, you’re not having a personal interaction. And if you’re not having a personal interaction, you’re not having sex.” 

Emba replied:

"I think that the fertility rate is actually kind of a lagging indicator. Having babies is the very end result of all of these social interactions that come before. First, you have to get outside of your house. Then you learn to talk to people. Then you form relationships, start dating, maybe get married and have sex, and finally, at the end, you might have a child… But the iPhone is preventing us from even starting at the beginning, even having those basic interactions that lead to relationships."

The Bottom Line:

In January of 2026, Jean Twenge testified before the U.S. Senate on the effect smartphones have on youth mental health and academic performance. Twenge is a psychology professor and author of multiple books on the pitfalls of screen use for Americans of all ages.

At the same time, ‘bricking’ one’s phone is an increasingly popular means of unplugging from technology for some regular, preset length of time. A 2025 survey found that Gen Z workers desired more, not less, in-person interaction. These and a plethora of other data points suggest fatigue with the virtual world, even as smartphone addiction is a widely-recognized phenomenon. 

Based on the NBER study, nothing less than the future of our country depends on our ability to harness screen use — particularly the handheld screens most of us have on our person all day, every day — in a way that serves, not enslaves, us.