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Implying the politicians in the government are capable of feeling shame?
Politico publish a note where european population start getting more deaths than borning. https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-population-shrinking-eurostat-fertility-birth-death-migration/
I… Look, can we be real for a minute? None of these are why people aren’t having kids.
Climate change is primarily affecting the global south, countries that have had the slowest drop in birth rates. Air quality globally has been increasing for decades. Yes, the current generation has less attainability than their parents, but modern life quality is still higher than any point in history. Even if you were to attribute it to that decrease, there have been decreases in resources between generations before without anywhere near the dropoff of births. Sumerian peasants didn’t have this level of decrease during concurrent wars and famine, both demonstrably worse conditions than most people alive will ever face.
Current studies point to one correlative factor: Smartphones. Now, we can discuss why: Personally I believe it is a mix of several reasons, including beneficial ones. I would argue that smartphone have made people more aware than ever of the unfairness of life in modern society, as an example of a beneficial cause. 30 years ago, a woman in Nebraska wouldn’t know intimately the firsthand account of a modern genocide, for example. Let me be clear: This is undoubtedly, unequivocally a good thing.
But we also need to address the sheer amount of slop content and unending access. Shortform content is proven to inflict users with symptoms reflective of ADHD and anxiety. Social media is built to make us not just dependent but addicted. The rise of smartphones has been part and parcel to the loss of third spaces; it’s not just that people lost community, it’s that we have also replaced it with instant access to online communities that cannot and will never be a viable replacement. We let the rich finally build the ultimate circus. And fixing that will not just require a fundamental restructuring of society, but also tough conversations about our responsibility to escape these systems.
The demograpic downturn started decades before that, but in the west it was (and to some extent still is) hidden by immigration.
You’re obfuscating: It’s been well documented that the availability of resources is inversely correlated to birthrates. We’ve had as much dropoff since the phone as we did since the industrial revolution. You’re calling two different rates of drop the same because they’re both drops; that’s not how math works.
Climate collapse, resource depletion, the enshittification of everything and my ever growing misanthropy, are exactly why I’m refusing to procreate.
And no, climate collapse and resource depletion are not just affecting the global south. Not by a long shot.
90% of earths topsoil is at risk of depletion by 2050
Global freshwater demand will exceed supply 40% by 2030
Global human population has surpassed Earth’s sustainable carrying capacity.
Global carbon emissions are still rising
The arctic sea ice extent is declining rapidly and we’re likely headed into a Blue Ocean Event later this year, and potentially a double BOE depending on how the El Nino and summer in the southern hemisphere go.
The world is likely to exceed a key global warming target soon but the earths alebedo with the declining sea ice and lack of cloud cover will impact these numbers massively and isn’t being predicted for, which means that 4.5c above the baseline by 2060 is now possible.
I never said just affecting the south, I said disproportionately. And you’re kind of proving my point: Before widespread information access, you probably wouldn’t even know. And yes, that is a good thing, as I stressed repeatedly in my post; not all reasons to blame the smartphone are bad, many are even good. It is a good thing people know about climate change. About the human cost of imperialism. About genocide. But that alone doesn’t account for the sheer drop, either, and there are negatives to this technology that need to be addressed.
There’s more people alive now than ever before. This insane need for infinite increases on a finite planet is why the world is ending.
Smart phones and short form content aren’t causing birth rates to decrease, that started decades ago when western women started getting access to contraception and gaining human rights.
A) we don’t need infinite growth; what we need is a tapering down so we don’t end up with an entire generation spending their golden years in a ditch. B) As I’ve stated to another user, you’re equivocating. Stop that. We’ve had the same percentile decrease in the last 20 years as we did throughout the previous century; you’re looking at two different rates of decrease and calling them the same because they both happen to be decreases. That’s not how math works.
Lmao, don’t worry about your pension, the water wars will get you long before you’re old enough to retire. Billions upon billions of us will die in the next 50 years.
It’s more important to you to hold some personal sense of moral superiority than engage with the death of millions; your blasé attitude speaks volumes towards your privilege. I have no doubt that the reason you don’t want kids has far less to do with climate change than being able to say you won’t because of climate change.
Did that make you feel better? I bet it did. Go on, let it all out. Tell me all the shitty things you’ve assumed about me because being angry at me is easier than accepting the world is ending.
Yeah I agree that smartphones have a huge role to play in lower birth rates all over the globe.
There is a correlation between the adoption of certain entertainment technologies and birth rates, such as TVs becoming widespread causing a small decrease in births, simply because people are spending more free time not being bored. Same thing happened with smartphones, but with a much more drastic impact.
More recently, during 2020 and 2021 the birth rates increased drastically due to the pandemic lockdowns making people bored and with far more free time on their hands.
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They got close to each other because they were already living together.
Obviously a lot of new relationships didn’t magically form during the lockdown.
Generally agree, but where did the air quality decrease compared to some decades back?
(80s kid here, so maybe my brain is to slow to realize it, because of the remains still in my bloodstreams of the lead fumes and unfiltered coal power plant exhausts I inhaled back then…)
Utah
Inversion days in the Salt Lake valley were so dystopian while I was there.
It didn’t. Air quality is substantially better world wide, there are better, real indicators of how bad the state of the world is the artist could have used. But also far more metrics about how better the world is, which no one ever likes to talk about. Way less extreme poverty, way less starvation, way less war, way more access to clean water, way more vaccinations, etc. The problem is the ultra rich are making life worse for the majority of privileged people, and we are really feeling it. But worldwide, humanity is objectively leaps and bounds better than it was 100 years ago
But its also air pollutants like smoke particles and car fumes. I’m genuinely thinking of taking the bus today instead of biking because I don’t want to kill my lungs.
Yes but those were worse in the 80s too. Cars used leaded fuel and diesel cars didn’t have mandatory soot filters. I drove behind a Mercedes with a broken (or removed) soot filter the other day and half of the backside of that car was just covered in soot. Like it had shit itself.
You’re probably still better off riding a bicycle due to the simple fact that you’re getting exercise, unless you’re in, say, New Delhi or you ride along a literal highway filled with diesel trucks.
Right, it’s like - is it worse now than being, say, a middle ages European serf? Or anyone at almost any point in 99% of human history?
You’re not wrong but it certainly feels like it right now, I’m in the Twin Cities and the air is just so gross right now due to being downwind from the Canadian wildfires. We’re just straight up being told to not go outside with a hazardous rating.
Exactly what I was going to say. The comic is only a couple days old, and I don’t know where the artist lives but here in the Twin Cities there has been smoke from Canadian wildfires around this time for several years straight now. I had to postpone my tennis plans today because of it. My older coworker this morning told me it used to never be like this. The office custodians closed the outside air dampers because the smoke was leaking inside.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure the comic is talking about the wildfire smoke. It smells like burning tires outside my home right now and everything is yellow.
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all true, but…
we enjoy our free time, hobbies, and traveling the world? want more of that not zero.
Not to mention the clear financial aspect
This is a much better reason, frankly.
“I couldn’t bring a child into a world like this” is a bit of mental gymnastics that people use to convince themselves that they’re being noble and selfless with this decision, when in reality it’s neither noble nor ignoble, neither selfless nor selfish. Every child eventually hits their parents with the classic “I never asked to be born!”, and while it’s certainly true, NOBODY asks to be born, and life has ALWAYS sucked in some way or another. Should pre-humans have refused to have kids because it would be cruel to bring them into a world where they have to kill to eat? Nonsense.
If people simply don’t want to have kids, they should simply say that and own it. They don’t OWE it to anybody to have kids - but they don’t owe it to anybody to not have kids, either. It’s not a moral decision in either direction. It’s simply a case that some people don’t feel up to the responsibility, and that’s fine: not superior, just fine.
And before anyone says that not having kids helps to keep the surplus population down: no problem on Earth is a result of the population being too high. There’s enough food for everyone; the problem is distribution. There’s enough land for everyone; the problem is that some people are hoarding. If the population starts using renewables and just generally going green, corporations build more data centers and invent other novel ways to waste resources.
no problem on Earth is a result of the population being too high.
Pre-industrial humans caused mass habitat loss, species extinction, and even climate change, and that was with their relatively miniscule populations and emissions. What quality of life are you imagining over eight billion people having such that we somehow don’t continue wrecking the environment? And how do you plan on putting the genie back in the bottle regarding all our polluting technological “advancements” that require fossil fuels and/or intensive mining? Who’s declaring to the world that plastics, electricity, and all forms of motorized technology are over, and how do you imagine this would be enforced?
Even completely stripped of all our technology, humans are still animals, and any animal species will wreak havoc on their environment when overpopulated. Hell you don’t even have to be an animal; go look up the Great Oxygenation Event or what happened when trees first evolved. What do you suppose Earth is going to be like for the millions of years required for it to adapt to the changes we’re making? Unlike monocellular organisms and plants, however, we are sapient creatures; if we can observe this is happening and know we’re the ones causing it, how is it not in any way a moral issue?
If you accept the concept of objective morality, then yes, it’s a moral issue. But I’ve already pointed out that population size is not the cause nor the solution. These are not actual percentages, but if I say “20% of the people cause 80% of the waste”, hopefully you’ll understand the underlying concept I’m trying to communicate.
Multiple reasons can be true. I could afford kids but I don’t like them. At the same time I lack the energy for such a constant responsibility. But both of these reasons don’t exclude the fact that I’d rather have humanity die out than set another person in this world as long as the current downward trend continues.
What reasons I tell people depends on who I’m talking to. Especially old people get really condescending if you simply tell them you don’t like kids.
No, they don’t owe it to anyone else to have kids. There is a biological imperative to procreate, generally, which I think is why a lot of people treat having kids as the default - something you need a reason not to do.
None of this is really relevant at an individual level. A person is free to do what they wish for whatever reason or no reason. But when an entire population stops procreating, after millennia of compulsively doing so, there is probably some cause worth understanding.
Even in that, I’m not saying it’s a problem that must be solved. Just that there is probably some cause. I do believe the biological imperative is there.
Why not? Pre-humans were not smart enough to recognise that having children would cause the children to suffer. Perhaps it would be better to simply die out as a species. It all depends on how you view morality and how you weigh non-existence
If it depends on how you view it, then it’s not a moral obligation, it’s a personal preference. Which is fine, but just acknowledge that.
Except morality is subjective and thus inherently dependent upon how one views it. There is no such thing as “objective morality”. Morales are always about personal preferences.
There is no such thing as “objective morality”
Then there’s no such thing as morality, but personal preference.
Yes.
My selfishness pushes me to not make life anyone else’s problem.
Every child eventually hits their parents with the classic “I never asked to be born!”, and while it’s certainly true, NOBODY asks to be born, and life has ALWAYS sucked in some way or another
Just because something has always been bad or worse and for everyone, that doesn’t make it ok.
The concept that either life must be perfect or else we’re all better off having never been born, is a hell of an extreme.
There are a whole lot more reasons to NOT have kids imo.
Even more importantly: kids suck.
So do adults.
That’s why I’m not making any adults either.
@velma little shits grow up to be big shits.
This is fine
I was looking at the costs of raising a child the other day and I don’t know how anyone does it. My job pays garbage with trash health insurance.
I’m just so mad at the management class with their high pay and not doing any actual work. My boss seems fine - I think he knows this is bullshit and goes a little out of his way to make it easier for me. But everyone above him? If I saw them drowning I’d have to think a long time before throwing a life vest.
I could totally afford a child, but if I chose to do that, I wouldn’t be able to afford anything else fun, so I haven’t chosen to. By all means, I make a pretty decent living and would’ve probably been in the upper middle class 20 years ago.
I was in the top 2% financially in my country before I walked away from that life (the work I did was lucrative, but a brutal grind)
At no point did money feature into the equation
I just really don’t like kids.
They don’t want to make it more affordable to have children so that women are forced to drop out of the workforce to stay home and raise them.
But they also don’t pay enough to be able to raise a kid without both parents working too, I take it?
Keep them poor and distracted.
This, + my health is awful (so I’m not going to subject another being to a rerun of my suffering), and 💕 boys 💕
Well, adoption exists. You don’t have to create a person, but you can still take care of children who need it.
I’m in a pretty bad way, unfortunately. Stroke ‘survivor’ at 21, with more-or-less the right side of my body as deadweight :(. I wasn’t in very good condition before but since, I’m a burden to everyone around me.
The short answer is: I don’t want to.
The longer answer is: I really, seriously, don’t want to.
That’s the thing that so many people seem to miss
They want reasons that they find acceptable, not “I don’t wanna”
Multiple legitimate reasons include, economic crisises, extreme economic inequality, the current climate crisis and many other legitimate reasons
I don’t need one of your “legitimate” reasons. I don’t want to. I also don’t want to have a dog, do I need a “legitimate” reason for that?
The fact that I just don’t want kids is a “legitimate” reason
It’s offensive that you think there are “legitimate” reasons, because it implies that anything else is “illegitimate”
The projections in here are wild 🤣
I mean, doesn’t really stop people in some places. Some are raising a family of five during famine, civil war and all sort or shit going on. But those places often have less choice for the women.
But still, most in the Western world, they have conditions vastly better to raise a child than a lot of the third world.
