Smartphones instead of love: how modern technologies provoke a demographic crisis

The advent of mobile phones and social media has caused a rapid decline in the birth rate on the planet. People are increasingly abandoning marriage and choosing to live alone.

Investment banker Serhiy Fursa spoke about this phenomenon in a commentary to “Pryamoy”, explaining why technological progress creates large-scale economic threats to humanity and Ukraine in particular.

“The first is urbanization, when people move from villages to cities and suddenly it turns out that children are difficult, expensive, and so on,” the analyst noted, commenting on new research.

According to him, gadgets are hindering the formation of couples. Social networks offer quick gratification and form inflated requirements for potential partners based on idealized images. Because of this, people are increasingly abandoning marriage and choosing a life of solitude.

Fursa also noted that the reduction in the number of working-age citizens and the aging of the population have become major challenges for the Ukrainian economy. The problem is not the total population, but the large number of pensioners compared to officially employed people who pay taxes, he adds.

To address these challenges in the future, the state will have to look for ways to attract migrants, the investment banker is convinced.

Recently, the Minister of Social Policy, Denys Ulyutin, named the number of Ukrainians living in government-controlled territory. According to him, it is 22-25 million people. At the same time, according to the director of the Institute of Demography and Social Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Ella Libanova, this number is currently 29 million people. A year ago, according to her, there were 30 million, but since then about a million people have died.

Population decline, low birth rates, premature mortality, aging of the nation, disease, external and internal migration, deportation – all these are factors that caused the deepening of the demographic crisis in Ukraine with the beginning of the full-scale war. In particular, the war led to a sharp reduction in the number of young people.

By the way, Deputy Director of the Institute of Demography and Quality of Life Problems of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Oleksandr Gladun stated that in order to preserve the population of Ukraine, 100 women of reproductive age should give birth to 210-220 children. Given that some women do not give birth for various reasons, the remaining Ukrainian women need to have approximately three children so that the country’s population does not decrease.

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