Two recent studies argue that smartphones may have contributed to falling birthrates by reducing in-person social interaction, sexual frequency, and other conditions tied to unintended pregnancies. "One of the studies published in May is called 'The Collapse of Teen Fertility in the Digital Era' and the other, published just Monday, is titled 'Is the iPhone Birth Control? Causal Evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 Carrier Monopoly,'" reports KTLA. "Both were chronicled in a New York Times piece by political writer Sabrina Tavernise on Monday." Slashdot reader sabbede submitted the story. From the report: The one from May, authored by two University of Cincinnati professors, posits that teen fertility "collapsed globally" starting around 2007 -- the same year the first iPhone was released. "Smart phones changed how teens spend time with each other ... this change in turn drove the collapse in teen fertility," the study's abstract reads. "Once enough teens are on the phone, being on the phone is where the peer network is; in-person time falls sharply, and with it the unstructured contact in which most unintended teen conceptions occur." The study claimed that countries "across the income and policy spectrum" were affected by the teen fertility drop, and that researchers used data from multiple countries, including the U.S., England and Wales, to rule out "country-specific contraceptive access and welfare reform stories." "This model predicts that the shift towards the phone-mediated equilibrium affects multiple aspects of teen behavior," the abstract continues, concluding that "the same instrument that produces a collapse in teen fertility produces a surge in teen suicides."

The study published on Monday looks more closely at the United States, explaining that nationwide general fertility rates have fallen 22% since 2007. "[This is] a sustained decline not readily explained by economic conditions, contraceptive use, housing or childcare costs, or other commonly cited factors," the National Bureau of Economic Researchers study states. "We assess the potential role of a different shock: the diffusion of the smartphone." As mentioned before, the first iPhone was rolled out in 2007, and this study makes use of that timeframe as "a natural experiment" by using data from 2007 through 2011, when iPhones were only sold on AT&T. "From June 2007 through February 2011, the device was sold only on AT&T, allowing us to identify its effect from variation in AT&T's mobile broadband coverage," the study says. "Entropy-balanced Poisson and synthetic difference-in-differences event studies imply that access to the iPhone reduced births by 4.5-8.0% at ages 15-19 and 3.2-6.6% at ages 20-24, with statistically significant but smaller declines among older cohorts. Placebo analyses applied to Verizon and Sprint's pre-2011 coverage footprint are null.

Taken together, these cohort effects imply that the diffusion of the iPhone deepened the decline in births among women under 30 while suppressing the rise in births among older women." "Overall, the diffusion of the iPhone explains 33-52% of the decline in the general fertility rate among women aged 15-44," researchers continued. "National-survey evidence on time use and sexual behavior is consistent with the iPhone reducing in-person interactions, increasing pornography use and reducing sexual frequency."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Polish lawmakers have voted to criminalize "trash streaming," with up to five years in prison for online broadcasts of serious crimes such as rape or murder, animal cruelty, humiliating violence, gambling promotion, or even simulated depictions of those acts. Reuters reports: The move is part of a broader push by Poland to tighten regulation of online content. Recent measures include banning the use of mobile phones by children under 16 in schools and introducing stricter age verification rules to access pornography. Under the new provisions, broadcasting crimes punishable by more than five years in prison, including murder or rape, will itself be classed as a separate offence punishable by up to five years behind bars.

The law also covers content showing cruelty to animals, violence aimed at humiliating others, and the promotion of gambling. The same penalties will apply to individuals who simulate or falsely portray the commission of such crimes while streaming, lawmakers said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Coinbase has launched Coinbase for Agents, a tool that lets AI agents like ChatGPT or Claude execute crypto trades and manage payments on a user's behalf. "For example, customers can prompt their agent to rebalance portfolios, identify trading opportunities, execute strategies and manage positions over time," reports CNBC. "It will eventually expand these capabilities to stocks and predictions." From the report: [U]sing Coinbase's machine-to-machine payments protocol, called x402, agents can pay directly for digital services like paywalled research, data APIs and on-demand compute without a human in the loop -- and execute trades based on those insights. The company sees this stage of agentic payments, which lets customers bypass the need to manage traditional logins or subscriptions, as a precursor to agentic shopping, where agents browse, find the best deals, select and make purchases on users' behalf.

[...] The whole idea is to give agents access to money and, through that financial independence, improve their set of capabilities to pretty much anything on the internet," Lincoln Murr, Coinbase's AI product lead, told CNBC. "In the 2010s, every internet company dealt with the transition from desktop and web into a mobile environment. And now in the late 2020s, we're seeing the exact same thing happen where agents are going to be the new primary economic actors on the internet."

The x402 protocol was created in May 2025 and has seen more than 100 million transactions since its debut, Murr said. There are about 157,000 agents acting as buyers using the protocol in the past 30 days, according to x402scan.com. "We saw immediate demand and interest in the ability for agents to pay for things autonomously and that was a huge waking up moment for us [on] the ability of agents to become these new primary financial actors across the internet," he said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cranamanor13 has added a photo to the pool:

Mijn vader viert zijn negentigste verjaardag met de familie in een spelletjescafé, want hij vindt zichzelf – terecht – nog altijd heel sportief.

Plaats de cijfers 1 tot en met 9 zo in het diagram dat elk cijfer precies één keer voorkomt in elke rij, kolom, de negen vetomrande 3x3 vakken, én de vier grijze 3x3 vakken.

Horizontaal: 1. Instrument met een zuil 5. The __, Starboy-zanger 10. ‘Clingendael: Nederlanders vrezen afbrokkelen internationale __’ 14. Vous permettez, __?, Adamo 15.

banzainetsurfer has added a photo to the pool:

Uwajima Castle (宇和島城, Uwajimajō) is one of only twelve original castles that survived intact from the Edo Period (1603-1868). The small but atmospheric castle was built around the turn of the 17th century and was later refurbished when the Date family took over ownership in 1615. The castle stands on a hill which was situated just by the sea in the past, but land reclamation along the coast has resulted in it standing further inland today.

Source: www.japan-guide.com/e/e5577.html

Koalas at risk of death once seven-day temps rise beyond 27C. The risks of death or hospitalisation of koalas increases as soon as seven-day average maximum temperature is above 27 degrees Celsius [80.6 Fahrenheit], a new study shows.

Weer voor Rotterdam 🌦️ - 12-06-2026 01:15 CEST

In één oogopslag:
• 13.6°C · Lichte motregen 🌦️ | Min 12.2°C / Max 17.2°C | Kans op neerslag 48%

Verwachting voor vandaag:
• Min 12.2°C, Max 17.2°C (Zware motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 6.3 mm, Kans op neerslag 48%, 🧭 1017.6 hPa ↗️ +2.7 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 24.5 km/u (6.8 m/s), richting: ↗ 228°

Uurlijkse voorspelling voor de komende 12 uur:

• 02:00: 14.0°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.3 mm, Kans op neerslag 98%, 🧭 1014.9 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 16.2 km/u (4.5 m/s), richting: ↗ 227°
• 03:00: 15.6°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.1 mm, Kans op neerslag 80%, 🧭 1014.9 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 18.7 km/u (5.2 m/s), richting: → 263°
• 04:00: 15.6°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.2 mm, Kans op neerslag 57%, 🧭 1015.0 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 20.9 km/u (5.8 m/s), richting: → 265°
• 05:00: 15.8°C (Zware motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 1.0 mm, Kans op neerslag 41%, 🧭 1015.3 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 20.5 km/u (5.7 m/s), richting: → 268°
• 06:00: 15.9°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.2 mm, Kans op neerslag 41%, 🧭 1015.7 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 21.2 km/u (5.9 m/s), richting: → 274°
• 07:00: 15.8°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.2 mm, Kans op neerslag 49%, 🧭 1016.0 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 19.4 km/u (5.4 m/s), richting: → 279°
• 08:00: 15.9°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.3 mm, Kans op neerslag 55%, 🧭 1016.7 hPa ↗️ +0.7 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 20.9 km/u (5.8 m/s), richting: → 277°
• 09:00: 16.0°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.1 mm, Kans op neerslag 53%, 🧭 1017.2 hPa ↗️ +0.5 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 19.1 km/u (5.3 m/s), richting: → 278°
• 10:00: 16.2°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 48%, 🧭 1017.7 hPa ↗️ +0.5 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 18.7 km/u (5.2 m/s), richting: → 269°
• 11:00: 16.2°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 47%, 🧭 1018.0 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 15.8 km/u (4.4 m/s), richting: → 265°
• 12:00: 16.5°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 56%, 🧭 1018.7 hPa ↗️ +0.7 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 18.7 km/u (5.2 m/s), richting: → 266°
• 13:00: 16.4°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.1 mm, Kans op neerslag 69%, 🧭 1018.8 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 19.1 km/u (5.3 m/s), richting: → 266°

Voorspelling voor de komende dagen:

• zaterdag 13 juni: Min 14.0°C, Max 18.1°C (Zware motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 2.8 mm, Kans op neerslag 61%, 🧭 1019.8 hPa ↗️ +2.2 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 24.5 km/u (6.8 m/s), richting: → 258°
• zondag 14 juni: Min 15.0°C, Max 17.5°C (Lichte regen) 🌧️, Neerslag 2.8 mm, Kans op neerslag 28%, 🧭 1019.1 hPa ↘️ -0.7 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 23.0 km/u (6.4 m/s), richting: → 278°
• maandag 15 juni: Min 11.9°C, Max 16.5°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.9 mm, Kans op neerslag 19%, 🧭 1018.1 hPa ↘️ -1.0 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 18.1 km/u (5.0 m/s), richting: ↘ 306°
• dinsdag 16 juni: Min 11.7°C, Max 18.0°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1014.2 hPa ↘️ -3.9 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 10.6 km/u (2.9 m/s), richting: ↘ 294°
• woensdag 17 juni: Min 13.9°C, Max 23.6°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.6 mm, Kans op neerslag 7%, 🧭 1017.7 hPa ↗️ +3.5 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 16.3 km/u (4.5 m/s), richting: ↗ 220°
• donderdag 18 juni: Min 15.9°C, Max 22.0°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 1.5 mm, Kans op neerslag 6%, 🧭 1018.9 hPa ↗️ +1.2 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 14.2 km/u (3.9 m/s), richting: ↗ 241°

Details:
• 🌡️ Huidige temperatuur (om 01:15): 13.6°C (Lichte motregen)
• 🤚 Gevoelstemperatuur: 12.7°C (-0.9°C)
• 💨 Windsnelheid: 19.1 km/u (5.3 m/s), richting: ↗ 223°
• 🌬️ Windstoten: 37.1 km/h (10.3 m/s)
• 💧 Luchtvochtigheid: 95%
• 🧭 Luchtdruk: 1014.9 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/3h
• 👁️ Zichtbaarheid: 5.8 km
• ☀️ UV-index: 0.0
• 🌅 Zonsopgang: 05:22 · 🌇 Zonsondergang: 22:00

Luchtkwaliteit:
• AQI: 28 🟢 (Goed)
• PM2.5: 4.5 μg/m³
• PM10: 5.7 μg/m³

Gegevens geleverd door Open-Meteo

#Rotterdam #Meteo #MeteoBot #MeteoNetherlands #OpenMeteo #FediMeteo