Why are fewer people getting married and having children in an age of abundance and choice? Why does solitude now feel safer than connection? And could our screens—our constant companions—be quietly reshaping not only our relationships but our collective future? In a striking conversation between Ross Douthat and sociologist Alice Evans on Interesting Times, a picture emerges of a civilization not collapsing under the weight of poverty or war, but quietly drifting into self-selected extinction.

Evans, a sociologist at King’s College London, has spent years studying gender equality, labor trends, and global development. But it’s the worldwide collapse in fertility that has lately taken center stage in her research. What she outlines is not a regional hiccup or a temporary trend—it’s a seismic global shift. With the exception of sub-Saharan Africa, birthrates are plummeting everywhere. Latin America, East Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe are all experiencing rapid demographic decline. And the implications are staggering. Economically, aging populations mean smaller workforces, rising dependency ratios, and increased fiscal pressure on healthcare and pensions. Younger generations, fewer in number, are expected to bear the financial burden of caring for the elderly while also trying to grow increasingly sluggish economies.

This isn’t just about policy tweaks or adjusting the retirement age. We are facing the possibility of entire cities emptying, economies grinding to a halt, and civilizational momentum stalling. Yet despite the severity of the crisis, public awareness remains low. Why? Because in many urban centers, population density masks the crisis. Cities feel more crowded than ever—but that’s often due to rural migration, not high birthrates. Beneath the surface, the demographic time bomb ticks.

At the heart of this crisis, Evans argues, lies a profound failure to connect. Young people, especially men, are not pairing off. In the United States, over half of adults aged 18 to 34 are now single—not married, not cohabiting. Similar trends exist in China, South Korea, and much of Latin America. Increasingly, young adults are opting out of relationships entirely. And the strongest predictor of declining birthrates across every culture isn’t education or income or religion—it’s singleness. Fewer couples mean fewer children. It’s that simple, and that universal.

So what’s keeping people from coupling up?

While there are cultural and economic nuances in each region, Evans believes the clearest global common denominator is technology—specifically, the rise of highly personalized, dopamine-driven digital entertainment. From Netflix binges to endless social media scrolling, from online gambling to immersive video games, our devices are offering an endless stream of engagement that’s safer, easier, and less vulnerable than real-life relationships. The result is what Evans calls “digital solitude.” It’s not that people are just alone—it’s that they’re increasingly content to be alone, seduced by frictionless digital worlds that outcompete the slow, uncertain rhythms of human connection.

Importantly, this digital retreat doesn’t just reduce opportunities for romantic relationships. It also erodes basic social skills. If you rarely interact with the opposite sex in person, how do you build empathy, charm, or trust? How do you develop the resilience to handle rejection, the sensitivity to read non-verbal cues, or the creativity to hold a real conversation? The answer, increasingly, is that people don’t. And without those social skills, even those who want relationships find them harder to initiate, build, and sustain.

This decline in socialization is also contributing to growing gender polarization. Men and women, no longer interacting regularly, often relate to each other through politicized online caricatures. Conservative men and progressive women become easy targets for each other’s frustrations and assumptions. Social media exaggerates these differences and turns political identity into performance art. Without the moderating influence of friendship or intimacy, empathy becomes rare. Everyone retreats into their own digital tribe.

Economics plays a role too. As more women excel in education and careers, they become more selective in relationships. Independence offers freedom—and with that freedom comes the ability to reject partners who don’t meet certain emotional, intellectual, or financial standards. Meanwhile, many working-class men are falling behind. Their marriage rates are plummeting. They struggle with job insecurity, lower educational attainment, and reduced social capital. This creates a painful loop: economic hardship reduces their appeal as partners, which increases singleness and loneliness, which in turn reduces motivation and social engagement.

So what’s to be done?

Some argue for policy solutions. Pro-natalist incentives—cash payments, parental leave, child tax credits—have been attempted in countries like Hungary, Poland, and South Korea. But Evans notes that these efforts, so far, haven’t reversed the downward trend. Even generous benefits haven’t overcome the deeper cultural and technological inertia. The problem isn’t just material—it’s existential.

Evans suggests starting with the youngest. Scholars like Jonathan Haidt have proposed phone-free schools to help children develop face-to-face social skills early. That could help reset the default from digital distraction to real-world play and bonding. But even if such reforms take root, they don’t address the adult population already hooked on hyper-engaging, attention-siphoning technology.

The real challenge, then, is cultural. We need to reclaim the value of intimacy, romance, and community—not just through sermons or policies, but through storytelling. Evans calls for a return to romantic comedies, family-centered narratives, and mainstream media that treats love, parenthood, and partnership as meaningful aspirations. But she acknowledges that cultural engineering is hard in a world of infinite content. If someone isn’t interested in a rom-com, they’ll just swipe to something else. The algorithm always wins.

That’s the core tension: our technology has evolved faster than our emotional and social wiring. We are living through a transformation that no civilization has experienced before—a moment when the tools we created to connect us are now isolating us. The market rewards distraction. The algorithms reward solitude. And unless something changes—unless we reclaim time, attention, and meaning—we may continue to drift, slowly but surely, toward a quieter, emptier future.

This isn’t about shaming individual choices or forcing people into relationships. It’s about asking hard questions: What kind of culture are we building? What kind of future are we preparing for? And are we okay with a society where fewer and fewer people choose to build families, not because they can’t—but because they no longer see the point?

It’s not a dystopia imposed from above. It’s a drift into extinction by design by us.