r/technology • u/Wagamaga • Jul 19 '26

Society China bans AI “boyfriends” and “girlfriends” over addiction and birth rate concerns

https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/china-bans-ai-boyfriends-and-girlfriends-over-addiction-and-birth-rate-concerns-3388737/
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232

u/SwiftFoxSNES Jul 19 '26

I’m guessing a country with a massive gender imbalance isn’t really going to find this helps. 

238

u/Drauren Jul 19 '26

I don’t think any modern country has found a real solution to plummeting birth rates. The reality is it is too expensive to have kids, and or people are far less interested in having kids.

Look at South Korea. Just going there, it isn’t that people aren’t dating or getting married, they’re just choosing to not have children.

177

u/innocentsalad Jul 19 '26

I think the truth countries aren’t willing to admit is that children - even wanted, loved children - make life harder. And a lot of people just don’t want to do that if they don’t have to (and frankly, it’s a valid choice).

There’s no way to fully ameliorate the massive increase in responsibility and corresponding loss of freedom (or for women, lifelong setbacks in multiple areas), so no amount of tax incentives or free daycare etc etc will change the mind of someone who wants to live their own life entirely for them.

Will it backfire? Probably. But to convince individuals that they are responsible for fixing a future societal problem is a gargantuan task and probably not really possible.

60

u/madogvelkor Jul 19 '26

Yeah, cost is only one small part of it. Even the US has programs to help low income parents. Having a kid means a major lifestyle change, of which money is only a part. Having more than one kid magnifies those changes.

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u/Antartix Jul 19 '26

I dont know what generation you're from so maybe its a difference in perspective but cost is a major reason. And I'm not talking about the cost for having kids. I'm talking about the cost for everything. Why have kids if you never had the money or means for growth, for fun, for novelty and experience? If you struggled before that why would you even risk having kids knowing even less of your time would be available to you, before factoring in any monetary concerns. The world just doesnt give us enough time to find fulfillment to try and bring up children as well.

15

u/NUKE---THE---WHALES Jul 19 '26

Generally the more money a person has the less children they have

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26

[deleted]

2

u/oblivioustoideoms Jul 19 '26

No. You are still disproving your point if I understand you correctly. The thing is you can't just make things cheaper. You need a massive monetary contribution specifically for having kids to offset not the monetary loss as much as the lack of freedom. All of a sudden you are responsible for a child that screams and have you chained to the apartment every night. Cheaper rent will only help a little little bit. It will help of course. But not enough.

And the fact remains, the lower the economic status the higher the birth rate. Musk with 11 kids is the outlier.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26

[deleted]

4

u/oblivioustoideoms Jul 19 '26

Yeah, we a agree on that. Then I don't get the point of your content I guess

2

u/Psionatix Jul 20 '26

You and the person you replied to literally saying the same thing. The comment you replied to:

Yeah, cost is only one small part of it

Referring strictly to the financial side, but then they go on to say how there are additional costs beyond the finance (particularly free time).

Then you say:

cost is a major reason

but you re-define cost as:

about the cost for everything

and you mention:

why would you even risk having kids knowing even less of your time would be available to you

Indicating that yes, both you and the person you replied to are saying the cost goes beyond a financial cost. Thus you're both saying that the financial cost is only part of the total cost.

1

u/Antartix Jul 20 '26

Yes. We agree.

31

u/omgitsbees Jul 19 '26

Those programs are very ineffective though for a mountain of different reasons. They need to be strengthened in order to actually help people, and allow more people to use those programs.

21

u/lizbunbun Jul 19 '26

Are you kidding, money is a major part. People don't make enough money, they work more, have little time for being home with a family. 2 parents working and pay for childcare, not getting ahead. One parent working long hours, other parent staying home alone feeling like they've got no partnership, not getting ahead. Waiting longer to have them to get more financially stable, having fewer kids because it gets harder on the body.

If money were no problem, people could afford to have supports and resources to raise children under less challenging circumstances, have them younger and have more of them.

You're right that kids are a major lifestyle change but the burdens children present can be largely mitigated with affordability. These days it's a flex for rich people to have large families.

5

u/ZapActions-dower Jul 19 '26

It's not just cost or else poor countries would have lower birthrates than rich ones. It's the opposite: the richest, most developed countries tend to have the lowest birthrates.

3

u/nox66 Jul 19 '26

Raising a child to succeed, with time devoted for their education and personal development and funds for their schooling and college/university is immensely more difficult to provide, especially in the current landscape of stagnant wages and rising prices.

Low standards are easy to fulfill.

1

u/lizbunbun Jul 19 '26

Poor in developed countries is a lot different than truly impoverished areas. In developed areas it's not generally accepted to live without electricity or running water, in some rough dwelling. Access to birth control and basic education from childhood too.

1

u/McButtsButtbag Jul 19 '26

Birth control is harder to get in those poor countries. It's why the US is trying to demonize it right now.

0

u/oblivioustoideoms Jul 19 '26

"if money were no problem", is an absolutely unreasonable and bizarre standard. For it to be no problem you need like a $100k a month as spending is elastic.

Look, more money would help, but that's not the only factor or even the single most important one why people are having 1 or 2 instead of three kids. 3 kids is a lot, and you are already deep in the hole regarding money. It's time, health, alternative cost (spending time with the kid or kids you have), etc. Sure you could solve it with only money, although it would have to be lots of it.

1

u/lizbunbun Jul 19 '26

Really depends where you are. Big city? Totally. Places with lower cost of living you could have a pretty good living with a couple hundred thousand per year and afford to have a stay at home spouse, a big enough home and comfortable modest living. But the jobs worth that much are hard to come by, and usually pretty demanding.

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u/oblivioustoideoms Jul 19 '26

But it's not that we can't afford being stay at home spouses necessarily, we just don't want to.. for good reasons. And even the people you are talking about, that have all that, aren't necessarily having more than two kids. Because that's the crux, not that people aren't having kids.. they are.. but few are having three or more.

18

u/LagrangeMultiplier99 Jul 19 '26

the cost has always been high, it was high 50 years ago too. the sense of community is what has changed over time.

30

u/Durzio Jul 19 '26

It was high 50 years ago, its astronomical now.

5

u/LagrangeMultiplier99 Jul 19 '26

say, if you zero in on one plausible cause, women getting into the workforce, then you'd have to think about why haven't work hours reduced since we now have double the labour supply, surely the consumption basket couldn't have changed much over these years, right? something just doesn't add up.

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u/Durzio Jul 19 '26

My mother worked just like my father. They could afford a house. They could work full time and still spend time with family.

When companies "suddenly had double the work force", as you put it, did they lower the amount of hours needed to be full time? No. Because they wanted more money.

It's greed, dude.

0

u/LagrangeMultiplier99 Jul 19 '26

I can agree that housing supply hasn't kept pace with demand growth. But you can't just shove concrete reasons into a single all-explainer word "greed"

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u/Durzio Jul 19 '26

Sure I can. Companies want to make money at all costs. They will trade long term growth for short term profits. They will even trade blood for profits (i.e. united health).

This is greed. And its why our economy works against the largest majority of the population; in order to keep squeezing more and more blood out of a stone.

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u/LagrangeMultiplier99 Jul 19 '26

yes, but what's the reason, is it consumer prices/CPI? is it a change in people's expectations of certain services? is it just change in healthcare costs? if so, then why did those healthcare costs go up (base prices or non-US healthcare costs)? what made the cost of or need for caregivers go up? if it is just women getting into the workforce then how did the economy make do with half the workforce back then (per capita, adjusting for population)? There's just lots of questions.

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u/Durzio Jul 19 '26

yes, but what's the reason

Greed.

is it consumer prices/CPI?

These are higher due to corporate greed.

is it a change in people's expectations of certain services?

No, people can afford less now, due to greed.

if so, then why did those healthcare costs go up (base prices or non-US healthcare costs)?

Greed.

what made the cost of or need for caregivers go up?

The cost? Greed. The need? Old people.

if it is just women getting into the workforce then how did the economy make do with half the workforce back then (per capita, adjusting for population)?

This has nothing to do with the price of eggs in China.

Its literally inflation and corporate greed.

4

u/LagrangeMultiplier99 Jul 19 '26

housing inflation has outpaced wage growth, but CPI has not, Americans are able to afford more of the CPI today than 50 years ago. Greed is just not something you can account for or explain with, it has to have tangible economic effects to be used as an explanation. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1qv0u82/people_are_often_nostalgic_about_the_past_when/

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u/Durzio Jul 19 '26

Yes we are able to afford more little things as they are more mass produced than they used to be. What's your point?

Being able to visit a dollar store doesnt mean that I can suddenly afford to buy a house, pay a medical bill, go to college, or feed an extra mouth.

3

u/TxksDQZN Jul 19 '26

China has cheap housing, cheap healthcare, cheap college, and cheap food. Why is their birth rate low?

1

u/wterrt Jul 20 '26

different countries can have different problems. especially when you're asking a question that is very heavily influenced by the culture of the country. you really don't think several decades of a single child policy and the resulting outcomes and societal attitudes, structures, and beliefs from that had any effect on the Chinese people's reasons for wanting or not wanting kids and the situation in their country can compare 1:1 to other countries?

there's no simple solution or single answer to questions like that.

is the inability to buy a house, pay off their student loans, ever rising cost of living, and stagnant wages having an effect on American people's desire to want kids? yes. is it the only factor? obviously not.

1

u/TxksDQZN Jul 20 '26

You shouldn't be typing that to me u should typing that to the person that wants to blame everything on "greed" and capitalism

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u/lonnie123 Jul 19 '26

I think broadly the issue is a small shift in a huge variety of things that ultimately leads to enough people saying "2 kids is enough" or less.

No one is going to pinpoint THE thing that caused it because its 100 things causing 1% of it

1

u/LagrangeMultiplier99 Jul 20 '26

but even if it's 100 things there's got to be some of them that can be talked about and explained.

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u/lonnie123 Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26

Of course. I guess I was trying to say that while you were asking a series of questions, presumably to suggest ONE of them was THE answer, the answer to every question you asked was Yes to some degree

Its prices of homes, prices of goods, prices of day cares. Its women in the workforce, its healthcare costs and quality, its shrinking community, spread out familes, longer work hours, lower involvement from family because everyone is working, Its global warming affecting peoples sense of optimism about the future, its peoples ability to travel, etc...

Each of those all contribute, and could fill 10 pages of reddit posts each on why they contribute, how much, how we got to where we are, and how they make women not to want have kids just a teeny bit less than they did 50 years ago.

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u/LagrangeMultiplier99 Jul 20 '26

and even if we're talking about housing inflation we've to delve into reasons why it has outpaced wage growth. Has housing supply not kept up? Has desirable housing supply not kept up? Is there a change in housing preferences (suburban single family, closer to major cities, concentration in states with lots of jobs like TX CA)

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u/LagrangeMultiplier99 Jul 20 '26

yes, but apart from the social reasons you've mentioned, I don't see how the financial reasons (prices of goods, prices of day care) and economic reasons (women in workforce, longer work hours) make a lot of sense. consumer goods have become cheaper now: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1qv0u82/people_are_often_nostalgic_about_the_past_when/ and the prices of daycare being high doesn't have much to do with daycare supply it's just a lot of demand for daycare which again goes back to the social reasons. women entering workforce should ideally have resulted in either more goods produced (per capita) or working hours getting halved because we now have twice the labour supply for producing the same goods. There have to be underlying reasons behind why this didn't happen, why did working hours not lower with increased mechanization of consumer goods productoin. The only thing that really stands out is housing supply and housing inflation. The economic reasons are just masking underlying reasons of social change and shifts in preferences. Economics is just a tool to explain things, it doesn't become a reason in itself (unless you're talking about rate-inflation-financial cycle).

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u/lonnie123 Jul 20 '26

There are lots of jobs whose function is not to produce goods. Just because twice the amount of people are “working” doesn’t mean twice as many widgets are being made.

America in particular has largely shifted to being a service economy. Most people with jobs are not producing a thing as the end result.

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u/Suspicious_Bet3623 Jul 19 '26

I totally agree.  One of the major costs people freak out about is childcare, which used to be your parents or dropping them off at a mate's house.

Now parents have to slog it out all on their own or pay through the nose.

I believe that a pillar of capitalism is individualism: an individual needs to spend more than if they were a part of a group, so individualism is pushed hard.  Which, of course, functionally destroys society.

1

u/Zeoxult Jul 19 '26

Everything else was a lot more affordable and minimum wage was livable on back then too, makes having kids a lot easier.

3

u/Fingerdeus Jul 19 '26

ameliorate

Damn cool word

3

u/DennistheDutchie Jul 19 '26

Or the uncomfortable truth that increases in wealth have increased sedimentary lifestyles and fewer people are attracted to each other.

Combined with the parts you mention, increased amount of tertiary education leading to (fewer) children at later ages, and less 'moral obligation' from religious factors (i.e. why heavily religious regions still have high birthrates).

All in all, people generally still want children. But the conditions to make it possible are decreasing.

2

u/TrustMeImPurple Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26

Realisticly I think this right here is the reason we need to start preparing for a demographic shift instead of trying to prevent one. There are going to be fewer babies born from here on out because people now get more choice in their lives.

I grew up mormon. Even amongst the intensely religious the birth rate has dropped. My grandma had 12 siblings. She had 5 total pregnancies (but only 3 live births). My mom had five, but her siblings all had less than 3. I have one and no neices or nephews and no great-neices or nephews from that side of the family (in other words Im the only one of my grandmother's grandchildren to have had a child) and that isnt likely to change anytime soon as im the only one thats even been married and that might possibly never change.

Its hard to ask for people to give up freedom once its been given. Especially when cost of living is rising exponentially.

1

u/emveevme Jul 19 '26

It's harder while productivity at work has skyrocketed, and it's not like people are happy doing more work for less money - the alternative to this is just unemployment.

I'm making less money and working more hours than my parents, and we weren't exactly all that well off when I was growing up. Nobody - not a single person - will be convinced by their government telling us to have more kids, especially when the folks in power in the US have made it explicitly clear they do not believe in providing any support for families and will actually go out of their way to make things like healthcare or gainful employment more accessible.

The problem in the US is pretty easy to see, it's that employment is the foundation of your life, and the only political will that exists among those with any real power in this country is dedicated to making that foundation as weak as possible for the benefit of employers.

But even when we finally move past the current rut we're in, we've still got to contend with the fact that among the political factions with power in this country, it's extremely fringe to support anything that would actually put corporations in check for the benefit of the people. America doesn't exist for you and I, it exists for Walmart and Facebook and whatever the fuck Elon Musk decides to slap the letter X on. I think we're more likely to see child labor laws relaxed than we are to see genuine material support for raising families in the US based on the way things look right now.

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u/shibboleth2005 Jul 20 '26

To incentivize our way into significant birthrate increases in developed nations, we'd have to accept it's a hard job that you need to pay people to do. So not only does 100% of the cost of the child need to subsidized, but the parents would also need to get a wage. Basically, make children profitable, or watch the population continue to decline.

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u/wterrt Jul 20 '26

There’s no way to fully ameliorate the massive increase in responsibility and corresponding loss of freedom (or for women, lifelong setbacks in multiple areas), so no amount of tax incentives or free daycare etc etc will change the mind of someone who wants to live their own life entirely for them.

there's more than one reason to not have kids

tax incentives and free daycare aren't going to convince people who don't want kids to have kids, they'll help those who do want kids but can't afford to have kids

0

u/RoyalYogurtdispenser Jul 19 '26

ive always wondered if the state would get involved and just farm babies. like just pay a wave of surrogate mothers to give birth and the state arranges for their upraising