If you are an older person, 50 years of age or older, you have a limited amount of time to do something about the population collapse before the few children you reluctantly had are forced to cut your benefits and dramatically reduce your standard of living. 

There isn’t enough time for seniors to earn their way out of a reduction in benefits. The good news is that, if you live in the United States, you’ll get a few extra fat years because the birth rate is slightly higher and migration is keeping the demographic ship afloat. Migrants have more children, but only for the first generation. After that, they adopt the sub-replacement birth rate in the United States of 1.7 (and dropping).

What the heck does this demographic cliff have to do with addiction? Plenty. Consider a podcast produced by The New York Times called Interesting Times, with host Ross Douthat, opinion columnist for NYT since 2009 and former senior editor of The Atlantic. Douthat covers subjects such as religion, morals, and higher education. In his latest episode, Douthat is in conversation with Dr. Alice Evans, a social science researcher at King’s College in London.

The title of the podcast is “How the iPhone Drove Men and Women Apart.” In the podcast, Douthat is positively giddy to be talking about his favorite obsession, the demographic cliff. Meanwhile, Dr. Evans speaks so quickly it’s hard to keep up. Perhaps it’s the podcast editing, but she breathlessly describes the birth rate crisis, the basis for her forthcoming book, The Great Gender Divergence. And here are the things she points out:

• Birth rate decline isn’t just happening in wealthy countries. It is happening at the same rate in rich and poor countries.

• Birth rate decline is happening among Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Baptists, Buddhists, Mormons — pretty much every religion.

• The only place in the world not experiencing birth rate decline is Sub-Saharan Africa.

What’s so special about Sub-Saharan Africa? Is it the religion? No. Is it poverty? No. Is it something special in the genes? No. It’s the region with the least smartphone penetration. Dr. Evans skillfully pushes back against Douthat’s premise that it is a lack of morality or religion that is leading people to prioritize their own happiness over sacrificing for a relationship or a family.

Dr. Evans points out the overlap between the map of smartphone penetration and the map of birth rate decline, and she lays the blame on an entire generation, worldwide, that has come of age with the smartphone. Between the ages of 20 and 40, they are forming couples at a fraction of the rate of previous generations. It is a “coupling crisis.”

The reason people are not having babies is that they are not forming couples, argues Dr. Evans, and she explains why one solution after another has failed to raise birth rates:

• Financial incentives

• Tax deductions

• Generous parental leave

• Parenthood benefits

• Propaganda campaigns

• In vitro fertilization

China can’t get that birth rate up. Japan can’t increase it meaningfully. Russia is having no luck convincing women to have more children. The northern European countries, famous for their social safety nets, are unable to stem the demographic decline. Only France, through lavish subsidies and migration, has brought its birth rate back near to replacement rate, which is 2.1 births for every couple. France is leading Europe at 1.8, and the United States is at 1.7.

If you believe Dr. Evans — and she makes a compelling case — the reasons people are not coupling are complex, but they are all related to the smartphone. The smartphone has come to absorb the time people used to spend socializing. The pandemic did not help. People stayed in more, had little extra spending money, and the smartphone provided adequate entertainment. The time spent online socializing is nothing like in-person encounters. Social persona — real and bots — are super-smooth caricatures that often make people feel inferior and insecure.

A recent article in London’s The Telegraph lays the source of the coupling crisis at the feet of boys: Gaming and pornography have sapped young men of their desire to work. The Brits have a special term for lazy young people: Neets. That stands for Not in Education, Employment, or Training. There are nearly a million Neets in the U.K. Neets shot up from 600,000 to 850,000 during the pandemic, but instead of going back down, they have steadily increased since.

The Telegraph points out the discrepancy between “young male Neats” and “young female Neats”:

Economic inactivity among young male Neets — which covers those who are not studying or working and are not looking for a job — has risen by 48 percent since the eve of the pandemic. The equivalent figure for young women is up by less than 10 percent.

The scenario goes like this: During the pandemic, teens, college kids, and entry-level workers were forced to work and school from home as much as possible, using technologies such as online coursework and online conferencing. This reduced opportunities for discovering a mate. The pandemic provided the tools, environment, and motivation to seek online entertainment and friendship through social media. This has included seemingly unlimited access to unfiltered pornography, along with compelling online games. Now add online gaming and sports gambling, and you have a big problem.

The problems show up in slumping grades and reduced numbers of young men going to university. They show up in increased mental health problems and substance use disorders. All of this reduces prospects for high earnings, which reduces appeal when it comes to coupling.

The Telegraph quotes a British employment counselor as saying, “kids are on the internet 24 hours a day, and they don’t want to work for anything less than 40 grand” ($54,000 in U.S. dollars). Recently, a U.S. firm named Empower conducted a survey to see what annual salary would make people happy. The current median household income in the U.S is $81,000. Millennials said they would need an annual salary of $270,000 to be happy. Gen Z responders said $588,000.

The fact that many young people think they can generate this level of annual income using their phones in their parent’s spare bedroom is indicative of the kind of unrealistic thinking generated in a “synthetic world” where everyone is wealthy, drives hot cars, goes on exotic vacations, and looks great in a swimsuit. The Gen Z dream job is being an influencer, an occupation that by definition cannot possibly employ more than a couple hundred high school grads. Most of the young people making a living as influencers are — wait for it — making live porn on demand. Glamorous life, isn’t it?

Gambling sites such as FanDuel and DraftKings encourage this fantasy using sexy imagery and the promise of riches just around the corner to get, in particular, young men to part with the paltry paychecks they have. If the big payday never arrives, neither does move-out day.

Men, women and children have immersed themselves in a synthetic world that is difficult to escape. It bundles school, work, and entertainment into a single device where there are almost no regulations. Companies mercilessly seek to maximize users’ time online by making this synthetic world as compelling as the law allows. If that doesn’t work, some of them even resort to blackmail to keep users coming back.

With pornography, you don’t have to twist arms to get young men to come back. The U.K.’s Centre for Social Justice says 25% of men aged 18-29 consume porn every day; just 2% of women the same age do. The Telegraph cites a 2023 study in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, that anxiety disorders and depression were strongly related to problematic pornography usage. The excessive use of pornography causes mental stress and is also used to displace mental stress.

This is the vicious circle that comes together from all these sources: Smartphone time replaces in-person communication, reducing social skills while increasing anxiety. Smartphone time generates unrealistic perceptions, particularly regarding sexual activity, that tend to make people feel inferior. The outlet for the stress generated by smartphone addiction and pornography addiction is often spending more time online. And that’s leading to far less coupling all around the world, dramatically lowering birth rates, leading to a future of reductions in senior citizen standards of living.

The issues related to smartphone addiction combined with pornography addiction are multifaceted, and we will continue to explore them here at AddictionNews.

Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published June 5, 2025.

Sources:

“How the iPhone Drove Men and Women Apart,” Interesting Times, May 29, 2025.

The Great Gender Divergence, by Alice Evans, Princeton University Press, March 25, 2025.

“How porn and gaming sapped young men of their desire to work,” The Telegraph, May 29, 2025.

“Why Gen-Z’s $600K Salary Benchmark Reflects a Financial Disconnect,” Forbes, December 4, 2024.

“Most Gen Zers think it’s easy to make a career in influencing,” CNBC, September 20, 2023.

“Pornography Consumption and Cognitive-Affective Distress,” The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, August 2023.

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