My darwinian theory:

About 11 years ago I went on a bus in Rochester, NY. It was bizarre to me that every person in the bus (about 12-15 people aged between 18-25 maybe) were buried in their phones. No one was talking to each other, not looking outside, nothing. I had the latest iPhone but since America was new for me I mostly spent time looking at the world around me and talking to people. I felt sad that the social world had come to this.

Fast forward to now and this is what I see in India too. Talking to random people in their prime years (maybe 18-30) is now 'weird'. But it's perfectly fine if it's via 'insta' or 'snap'. I can't imagine how much worse it's now in America in that age group. I know my pre teen nephews have withdrawals if I take away their devices here in India.

The moral here is that procreation requires better social skills and strong presence in the world and good parenting will probably create that. In order to raise an offspring, people need to have good mental health and that generally leads to good physical health which in turn improves the mental health and so on which can lead to procreation etc. The scrolling and virtual world is a distraction from reality. Something that keeps away humans from each other. We will only see this getting worse. In India the social world is still good enough to see higher birth rates. But that is also now slowing down. Mental health of people is not great. People complain about being single but there is virtually no way to hold a conversation as getting their attention is impossible. Phones are glued to their eyes and hands even when sitting with you.

I am hoping though things will be different in the future.

Real people are annoying, hard to deal with, unpredictable, dirty, smelly, all sorts of issues.

The imaginary people inside your magic box are perfect, on demand, and don't complain or otherwise bother you when you put them away.

What porn is to love, social media is to, well, darn near everything else. Once we perfect donuts over TCP/IP we'll all be perfectly round and content and never need to interact with anyone else.

I watched this video a while ago that said something similar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ispyUPqqL1c

The decline in birthrates isn't related to growing living standards, as poorer countries also have declining birthrates. Turkey has a lower birthrate than the UK, and Mexico has a lower birthrate than the US. Places like North Africa and South India have seen declines in birthrates comparable to the West.

He makes the argument that declining birthrates are due more to a fall in coupling than a fall in people in relationships choosing to have kids. He brings up that birthrates would actually be increasing if marriage rates remained constant. This means that all the incentives countries push such as subsidized childcare or tax breaks to have kids are putting the cart before the horse, as a growing share of young people don't have a partner to have kids with to begin with.

He then brings up that the fall in coupling a country experiences is roughly correlated to the rate of mobile internet usage in that country. 46% of American teens say they use social media "almost constantly" vs. 24% a decade ago. People would rather use social media than go out and meet others. He points to South Asia as an example, as it's experienced a relatively smaller decline in marriage rates, and mobile internet usage there is lower than in the rest of the world.

I suppose it's yet another way that cell phones are impacting society.

It's like Google, Meta, etc are not only siphoning money from peoples attention. They are siphoning human life force.

Captain’s Log, Stardate 48492.1 We have entered orbit around Sol III-bis. Long-range scans suggested a pre-warp civilization at the peak of the Information Age. However, upon arrival, Lieutenant Uhura reports total silence across all hailing frequencies. No radio, no subspace chatter, not even leaking analog television waves. Yet, life sign readings are off the charts. It is a ghost town inhabited by eight billion ghosts.

[Surface - The Town Square]

The transporter beam hums and fades. Riker, Spock, and Counselor Troi materialize in the middle of a bustling intersection.

Riker immediately reaches for his phaser, expecting a reaction. A panic. A scream. Nothing.

A native walks straight through the space where Riker’s arm is raised, correcting their path by mere millimeters at the last second, eyes never leaving the blue glow of their palm.

"Captain," Riker taps his combadge, voice tense. "We've landed. We are... invisible."

Spock raises an eyebrow, scanning a nearby human with his tricorder. "Incorrect, Commander. We are simply irrelevant. Their optical sensors are registering our presence, but their visual cortex is filtering us out as 'non-content'. We are pop-up ads in a physical reality they have deprecated."

Suddenly, Troi gasps. She stumbles, clutching her temples. Her knees hit the pavement hard.

"Counselor!" Riker is at her side instantly.

"It’s... it’s too loud, Will," she whispers, her face pale, sweat beading instantly on her forehead. "It’s not voices. It’s not emotions. It’s... flashes."

She squeezes her eyes shut, but the tears leak out. "A billion images of felines. Dancing figures. Arguments without context. Tragedy mixed with absurdity. It’s a scream, Spock, but it’s a scream about nothing."

"Motion sickness of the mind," Spock observes, looking at his readings. "A precise description. You are attempting to find a focal point, Counselor, but there is none. The signal is not radiating from a central broadcast tower. It is a mesh network of pure dopamine."

He turns his tricorder to the crowd. "Fascinating. They utilize a tight-beam UHF protocol—what the archives call 'Bluetooth 17'. It ensures that no signal ever touches an unintended recipient. They have achieved perfect privacy, and in doing so, created perfect isolation."

"They could have warp drive," Riker mutters, looking at a mag-lev train passing silently overhead, filled with slumped, blue-lit figures. "Look at this infrastructure. The power efficiency alone..."

"They do not want warp drive, Commander," Spock says, closing his tricorder with a snap that sounds like a gunshot in the quiet street. No one flinches. "Space travel requires looking up. Warp drive requires a destination. This species has already arrived."

Troi looks up, her eyes bloodshot, trembling. "We have to leave, Will. Please. It’s... sticky. The thoughts... they want to be thought. They’re hungry."

Riker taps his badge. "Enterprise, three to beam up. Now! Lock on to my signal, not the ambient noise."

[The Bridge]

Back on the ship, Troi is in sickbay, sedated. Spock stands at the science station.

"Status on the planet, Mr. Spock?" Picard asks, looking at the viewscreen. The planet is beautiful, blue and green, peaceful.

"It is a tomb, Captain," Spock replies, his voice devoid of judgment but heavy with implication. "They have not been conquered. They have been optimized. They have traded the chaotic inefficiency of exploration for the streamlined certainty of simulation."

"The Great Filter," Picard murmurs.

"Indeed," Spock turns. "We often theorized that advanced civilizations destroy themselves with fire. It appears, Captain, that it is just as likely they destroy themselves with a warm bath."

Picard stares at the screen for a long moment. "Helm, engage. Warp 1. Get us away from here."

"Course, sir?"

"Anywhere," Picard says, adjusting his uniform. "Just... outward."