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September 28, 2025Open Access

Did smartphones break the world as we knew it?

Key Points

The analysis highlights that the decline in fertility rates coincides with the widespread use of smartphones, indicating a potential correlation.
Key societal changes, including backsliding of democracy and rise of populist politics, have been observed since 2015, linked to smartphone accessibility.
The conjecture proposes that the spread of smartphones may be a common cause of various political and social shifts seen in recent years.
Exploration of historical parallels emphasizes how similar information revolutions have influenced societal structures and governance.

Abstract

I overview data on several radical societal changes started circa 2015: accelerated decline in fertility rate, backsliding of democracy, rise of populist politics and arrest in generational renewal of political leadership. I conjecture that all these processes have a common underlying cause: the spread of cheap and easy access to information due to wide spread of smartphones. I speculate about possible mechanisms connecting the observed changes with this underlying information revolution and discuss relevant historical parallels.

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Mikhail V. Tamm (Mon,) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/68d90a0f41e1c178a14f6a19 — DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2503.07773

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Did smartphones break the world as we knew it?

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