I wrote, earlier this week, about the ‘baby bust’ currently taking place in America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. Young American women are having babies at a slower pace than at any time in the country’s celebrated history. (You can read that essay here, on the off-chance you missed it on Tuesday. Hey, I can totally understand. I had a lot going on myself, on Tuesday.)
Babies have gotten some bad press lately, which is largely a PR issue for them. Very few babies take the time to write articles for publications like the Daily Post, pleading their case before the general public. Too busy nursing and sleeping, most them. So they’ve relied upon people like me stand up for them, because they can’t stand up for themselves. (They can’t stand up, period.) And I will be the first to admit that… well, writing articles about the positive benefits of having more babies… hasn’t exactly been foremost on my mind, this past year.
But now it appears that this problem is not unique to the USA. Actually, both problems. The problem of too few babies, and the problem of a poorly-handled PR campaign.
Take, for example, China.
The world’s biggest country is still getting bigger… but maybe not for much longer. Earlier this week, China released the results of its 2020 census count, and the numbers suggested that the country’s population had increased by 5% from 10 years ago, to total about 1.4 billion people. Give or take.
But the census also showed a dramatic 20% drop in the number of babies born last year — a drop sharp enough to cause certain smart people to predict China will reach a “peak population” by 2030. Tough news for the diaper industry.
Those same “certain smart people” are prone to suggest that the declining birth rate is due to well-thought-out decisions on the part of young Chinese adults, based on current economic conditions — the high cost of a two-bedroom home, for example.
I’m prone to look more deeply into the census data, and find the reasons that no one else has considered.
Like, for example, the digital games the Chinese are playing on their mobile phones.
One of the more popular games in China, Genshin Impact, was developed by Shanghai-based video game company miHoYo. From Wikipedia:
‘Genshin Impact takes place in the fantasy world of Teyvat, which is home to seven distinct nations, each of which is tied to an element and ruled by a god associated with it. The story follows a twin, referred to as the Traveler, who has traveled across many worlds with their twin but has become separated from them by an unknown god in Teyvat. The Traveler travels across Teyvat in search of the lost sibling with their companion Paimon and becomes involved in the affairs of the other nations, gods, and the world…
The game received a generally positive reception, with critics praising the combat and open-world freedom, while some criticism was raised at its endgame content and monetization. A commercial success, the game grossed over $1 billion within six months of release.
Who needs babies, when you can have this much fun with a phone?
And you can dress your phone in different colors — pink, blue, any color your heart desires — for a lot less than dressing up a baby. The phone already knows how to talk, so that problem is already handled. Whenever you have something else going on, the phone automatically goes to sleep.
Want the phone to be totally quiet, so you can sleep through the night? Just turn it off.
Yes, phones do tend to break when you drop them. But so do babies.
A phone, however, won’t break your heart, when it becomes a teenager.