After a decades-long decline, America is now in the throes of the worst fertility crisis in our nation’s history. A record number of people are not having children.

The big question is why?

Certainly the answer is multifaceted, but there’s one undeniable driver behind America’s as well as nearly every other country’s declining birth rates, says Lyman Stone, senior fellow and director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies: the iPhone.

On this episode of “Rufo & Lomez,” Christopher Rufo and Jonathan Keeperman speak with Stone about how our most pervasive technology is wrecking the world’s fertility numbers.

While there are many drivers behind globally declining birth rates — infertility issues, financial difficulties, a genuine desire to have fewer children, and even a desire to have no children at all — iPhones, says Stone, are “little sterilization boxes that we all carry in our pockets.”

But it’s not a literal sterilization — “The research suggests that the radiation from them is actually harmless,” Stone says — but rather a social sterilization.

“[Smartphones] change how we socialize together. … Social media replaces in-person interaction; reading stuff online replaces in-person interaction, replaces intermediation in the physical world,” he explains.

“Increasingly, it’s not just that people have fewer babies; they have fewer first kisses; they have fewer one-night stands; they have fewer dinner parties; they have fewer every kind of social interaction … and so as social media and cell phones are just killing life together,” he adds.

This isn’t just speculation either. The data shows a major decline in face-to-face interaction starting in 2008 — just one year after the first iPhone hit the market.

Before 2008, fertility rates across the world would ebb and flow depending on a variety of circumstances, but following the invention of the iPhone, they’ve stayed consistently low, Stone explains.

The social isolation caused by the iPhone has resulted in a decline in marriage rates, which directly impacts birth rates.

Interestingly, statistics show that people who do marry young are having the amount of children they desire.

“There’s no gap between desired fertility and actual fertility on average for people who marry before age 26,” says Stone.

Further, countries that have “religious prohibitions” on iPhone usage for extended periods of the day have also maintained higher birth rates.

“So Israel with Shabbat or Muslim countries, where we know from cellphone data everybody turns off their cell phone for 20 minutes five times a day … still have high fertility,” says Stone.

iPhones, he explains, essentially turn off “the part of our brain that’s supposed to know your tribe and recognize your tribe and really want to have sex with your tribe.”

Simultaneously, it supplies “an endless stream of porn” to keep people sexually satiated without producing children.

To hear more about the factors behind the world’s declining birth rate, watch the full interview above.

Want more from Rufo & Lomez?

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A Florida teenager was arrested and charged with murder after police said they literally found his name on evidence left with gruesome remains of the victim.

The Palm Bay Police Department said it responded on Saturday to a report of vultures surrounding a closed, abandoned suitcase in Palm Bay.

Jones allegedly confessed to the killing to his girlfriend and told her he wanted to kill sex offenders. He allegedly printed out a list of registered sex offenders nearby.

When police arrived at the location, they found a black suitcase in tall grass emitting a strong odor and containing human remains.

A second suitcase was found with additional remains, according to an affidavit.

Police said they immediately suspected a 19-year-old named Lucas Sander Jones of Indialantic because they found an Amazon package addressed to him in one of the suitcases. They also found other personal belongings.

Detectives said they learned Jones was associated with 28-year-old Colie Lee Daniel, who had been reported missing six days earlier by his mother.

Police obtained a search warrant and found Jones at his residence with his girlfriend. They observed that Jones had several injuries, including visibly healed wounds and bruises. He chose not to speak to police.

His girlfriend, however, told police she saw Jones trying to wake up Daniel as he was lying on Jones’ bed on Friday, March 20. She also said that Jones had her drive him out to locations in Palm Bay to discard of two gray totes from her Honda Accord.

Police said they found blood and a knife at the residence.

Jones was charged with several crimes and released on bond, but as the investigation progressed, police determined the evidence justified a murder charge, and he was arrested again. He was charged with second-degree murder, dangerous and depraved without premeditation.

Another affidavit said that Jones allegedly confessed to the killing to his girlfriend and told her he wanted to kill sex offenders. He allegedly printed out a list of registered sex offenders nearby.

RELATED: 14-year-old stabbed and murdered after going on a bike ride in Florida. Police arrest a ‘homeless drifter’ for the crime.

Booking records indicate he was initially arrested for felony abuse of a dead human body and tampering with evidence.

While officials are still trying to determine what his alleged motivation might have been, they said that they believe he had some of the victim’s blood on slides of a microscope. WKMG-TV theorized that he might have been inspired by the serial killer show “Dexter.”

A local official said they are trying to develop the rural area, and if they do, he expects more bodies will be found in the area.

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Socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani faced fierce criticism when he responded to the death of a 7-month-old baby girl who was struck by a stray bullet in Brooklyn.

The tragic death of Kaori Patterson-Moore on Wednesday led to demands for change from the community, but Mamdani fell back on tired old tropes.

‘We all know you still hate police and policing and would dine with this vile criminal if you could get away with it, politically.’

“This is not the first family in our city to know this pain,” Mamdani said during a media briefing Thursday.

“Too many children have never grown up into becoming adults,” he added. “Too many parents have had to bury those that they love the most. We cannot accept this as normal in our city. We cannot grow numb to this pain, and today is a devastating reminder of just how much more work there is to be done to combat gun violence across this city.”

Critics saw the statement as blaming guns rather than criminals.

“Literally anything but blaming the criminals who our system releases onto our streets repeatedly, over and over again, with no consequences,” said NYC Republican Councilwoman Vickie Paladino. “Absolute disgrace.”

“Framing this as a gun problem rather than an evil gangbanger problem is more familiar territory for a self-styled progressive,” said Manhattan Institute fellow Rafael A. Mangual to Fox News Digital, “whose political base is constituted by people simultaneously (if dissonantly) committed to the cause of ‘gun control’ as well as efforts to reorient the criminal justice system to be more lenient toward the offenders who pull triggers.”

“We should focus on the family’s loss today. But every time you now ‘thank NYPD,’ it burns my blood after you spent your career attacking them and coddling criminals,” replied attorney Jim Walden, who ran against Mamdani.

RELATED: Curtis Sliwa cozies up to Mamdani in cutesy cat comedy sketch — and Republicans are calling him a traitor

“You really should be ashamed of yourself, @NYCMayor,” Walden added. “But we all know you still hate police and policing and would dine with this vile criminal if you could get away with it, politically.”

Police have arrested a suspect in the shooting who was allegedly caught on surveillance video. The video shows one man apparently shooting while riding as a passenger on a moped being driven by another man. The driver is being sought by police.

The baby’s family said she had just learned to say her first word, which was “mama.”

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