The correlation between smartphones and delayed reproduction part 2

[Quietterry]

Last thread ran out of pages.

It would appear the birth rate in India has also decreased when it used to be super high (hence having a billion people)
CRED founder Kunal shah seems to agree internet may have played its part.

As for the posters adamant that nothing had changed in the uk in the last 25 years and claiming they didn’t know anyone who had children at 25 back then. Here’s some statistics for you:

United Kingdom (England and Wales): Exact cohort data tracks that 33% of women born in 1972 (who turned 29 in 2001) had at least one child by age 25. For the cohort turning 25 exactly in 2001 (born in 1976), childbearing hit a generational low point, where fewer than 30% of women had given birth by their 25th birthday.

So if nothing had changed about 60 out of 200 people I went to school with would have had kids by now

And if you googled it you would see that is inaccurate.

There is no correlation....we are the first generation that started going to uni en masse. Our parents generation did not have this choice. Having a child at 16 is shameful and unnecessary

OP, you’re right that mothers are having their first child at increasingly older ages, but this is the England and Wales data since 1938 - there’s no noticeable change in the trend when smartphones came in.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/294594/mother-average-age-at-childbirth-england-and-wales-by-child-number/

@noworklifebalance

Heres an accurate link for you

https://www.statista.com/statistics/294594/mother-average-age-at-childbirth-england-and-wales-by-child-number/?srsltid=AfmBOorHTd2n4qSd69s4vKI4ghRuDvknoC4M1cNrs3NLhB0bBzp4tOaY

Please don’t post links of bullshit you didn’t bother to double check while insulting MY intelligence

Ah same as I just posted. Yes it shows there’s a steady increase, but it also shows the increase rate appears to be totally unaffected by the introduction of smartphones.

Hilarious, and for all my flaws I’m not the one posting links to false information

I don't think it's funny at all. You're a walking example of why it's a bad idea to have a kid when you're still one yourself and how that impacts your education. You've made a claim that you can't support with any evidence, people are showing you in the link you've posted there is literally no trend there, yet you're responsible for another human life.

I don’t think smartphones are the only reason but I do think they’ll play a part in accelerating the increase, I mean more the internet in general so I’m including video games which many grown adults will spend hours playing instead of socialising

Cool and someone who presumably had children as an adult was posting a bullshit link trying to say average age of first birth was 29 in 1938 when that was births in general. I don’t see you insulting her

Not being funny but who gives a fuck? It’s obviously a problem for people who want kids at that age but don’t feel able to because of wages, house prices, costs, etc. but for the people who either don’t want kids or want kids later why does it matter if they’re aren’t having kids earlier

Someone presumably reading the graph wrong isn't really on the same level as what you've done, which is make a weird claim based on pretty much nothing, claim your mother's one example should be given the same weight as endless posters on here saying otherwise (that's just basic maths really isn't it?) shown that you aren't able to read a basic graph properly or identify the trends, or lack of, in it, shown you don't understand correlation vs causation...need I go on? These are all very basic GCSE level concepts that you should've been in school learning about rather than getting up the duff.

Had you considered the possibility that having access to the internet meant that women were made more aware of their choices, access to family planning services, a decent standard of education and peer support, it would have made a more coherent hypothesis than 'Boys prefer playing on their phones than trying to convince gullible 15 year olds to have sex with them'.

This may come as a shock, but at 25 I wasn’t sat on my arse on my phone avoiding humans, or playing on my Xbox.

I was working full time as a teacher, paying my bills for the flat that I rented at the time, and saving a mortgage deposit. I married my now ex husband at 27, and cared for the following 3 years for his father with dementia. He was diagnosed the week before our wedding.

I wasn’t avoiding people and wasting my life on Facebook. I was busy, being a grown up with responsibilities and plans before having kids.

I am you parents age. One girl in school had a baby. None of my friends has babies in their early or mid twenties. Most were over thirty, some over forty.

Most went to university and graduated at 21 or 22, either studied more or started a career. Travelled, bought houses.

my mum is nearly 80 - she and her friends had babies in their twenties and thirties and forties. They started earlier because they didn’t go to university and married earlier.

You are making up a silly argument about smart phones. The internet was gaining traction when I graduated university in 2000, most people had a simple mobile phone but smart phones weren’t about.

The big societal change has been women’s rights, women’s education, women’s ambitions and expectations. Put simply there are more options for women. More things to be done, experiences to achieve, ladders to climb and goals to be conquered.

What part about the birth age of first time mothers increasing slowly and gradually since 1972 makes you think it would be linked to smart phones?

OP how old was your mum when she had you, out of interest?

Maybe they will, but the increase has been slowing down recently, not accelerating, so I guess we’ll wait and see if it changes.

If you had said internet and widely accessible access to
information I would have agreed with you. Smartphones are just a tool which has enabled the accessibility of the internet to a wider audience including women.

As David Attenborough said the most effective birth control is education of the women and girls. It enables more informed decisions and has opened up infinitely more opportunities for women other than marriage and children.

There are many reasons why people have kids later in life, or do not have them at all, but none has anything to do with smart phones.

Goodness me - Statista is useful but it’s not source data so will have inaccuracies. Assuming it is correct, it shows the rise in age of first time mums has been happening for a decades, predating smartphones and gaming. It will also vary geographically, with educational achievements of the mother (and her mother), with family income, ethnicity, etc.

This!

I asked on your previous thread. Are you the poster who keeps posting about having a child at 16 and everyone judging you, so now you mock people who have children later in life?

No-one had a smart phone aged 25 in 2001 so smartphones had no impact whatsoever in the reproductive choices of those 25 year olds in 2001.

But you did post
"...what I said about phones has been looked into by scientists"

and then provided a link titled: iPhone may be one factor in falling birth rates, researchers say

which was one economist 😝

From the article that you posted to 'back up' your claim
The 2000s brought a number of major social and economic shifts that are widely believed to be contributing to the so-called “baby bust.” These include the global financial crisis, rising housing costs, higher levels of education and broader access to contraception

"..one of the most important changes in recent decades is that more people, particularly women, feel empowered to choose whether or not to become a parent"

Ends with "Researchers (or one economist?)acknowledge that the iPhone itself is unlikely to explain such a complex global trend on its own, but say it may be part of a broader shift in how people connect, form relationships and structure their lives."

Marrying the first person who asked and having babies is thankfully no longer the best that young girls can hope for. They no longer have to buy in to the whole idea that the pinnacle of life is being one of two and producing babies straight out of school. I'd much rather see my daughters spread their wings and aim for the stars than believe that having a baby is the best they can hope for

I'm so glad that women now have a choice whether to even have children. That society, as a whole, has moved on from EXPECTING that all girls take that path. I'm glad women have access to birth control and the ability to decide not to go through with a pregnancy should they choose not to. Happy that education is available and girls want more than to drop out and check out.
iPhones and technology have certainly changed how we do many things and interact but have a miniscule effect on why young women are not having babies at the same rate they one did 🤷‍♀️

No one is disagreeing with you that fewer 25 year olds have kids now than in generations before. We can just all see its for a huge range of reasons. And not solely due to the existence of smart phones.