How the iPhone Drove Men and Women Apart

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/opinion/dating-marriage-children-fertility.html

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What would make you want to have more children? This week on “Interesting Times,” Ross Douthat speaks with Dr. Alice Evans, a social scientist who is as concerned about the global decline in fertility as Ross is. The two discuss why this isn’t just a gender issue — it’s “a solitude issue” — and whether there’s a way to bring relationships back.

Below is an edited transcript of an episode of “Interesting Times.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

Ross Douthat: From New York Times Opinion, I’m Ross Douthat, and this is Interesting Times.

Fifty years ago, the world feared a population bomb, an explosion of population growth that would yield famine, war and disaster. But for most of my career, I’ve been trying to persuade people that actually, population decline is now the greater peril. And in the last few years, the world has finally caught up with my once eccentric anxieties. We’re undeniably headed toward a period of global population collapse, one that threatens to maroon today’s children — mine, yours, if you have them, and by the way, you really should — in a world of emptying cities and slowing economies.

Our guest today has literally traveled the world studying this issue, trying to answer the hardest question, not just why birthrates have declined, but why they’ve declined so far and so fast in so many different places. Alice Evans, welcome to Interesting Times.

Alice Evans: Indeed. Thank you so much.

Douthat: So you’re a sociologist at King’s College London and you write a lot about and you’re working on a book about the key social forces shaping the decline in fertility around the world. And those include, in particular, the failure of men and women to relate to one another and pair off. Those issues are part of why I’m especially interested in talking to you.