America’s fertility rate has hit a new record low of 1.57 in 2025, well below replacement rate. It’s been on this steep downward trajectory since 2007.
The MAHA movement has recently brought much-needed attention to America’s fertility crisis, with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy calling it a “national security threat.” MAHA is proactively addressing the root health causes of the rising infertility crisis in our country, like reducing environmental toxins and chemical exposure and improving diet and nutrition by reducing consumption of ultra-processed foods, to improve natural fertility.
But there is another hidden health hazard harming Americans’ sexual health and undermining real-life relationships, sex, marriage, and therefore fertility that has been largely overlooked: the digital screens we all carry in our pockets.
To make America healthy again and reverse our way out of this fertility crisis, we need policymakers to respond to what is happening to young people behind screens. It’s a grim picture.
Smartphones and social media have decreased in-person socializing. In-person socialization rates among young adults dropped by nearly 50% between 2010 and 2019—and that was before COVID-19 lockdowns made it even worse. The same period saw steep declines in dating, sex, and marriage. Marriage rates dropped from 9.8 marriages per 1,000 people in 1990, to 6.5 in 2018, to 6.1 per 1,000 in 2023. So too have rates of sex. In 1990, 55% of adults ages 18-64 reported having sex weekly, but by 2024 that number had fallen to just 37%.
One study also found a direct link between problematic use of social media sites and a range of sexual issues in both men and women. The full scope of research is available in our new report, but quite simply, smartphones and social media are not good for sex, nor thus, fertility.
The proliferation of online pornography has multiplied these negative effects. Pornography users—both men and women—feel less satisfied when they have real sex, and have higher rates of sexual problems.
The share of men under 30 who had never had sex tripled between 2008 and 2018, from 8% to 27%. Meanwhile, erectile dysfunction—once an old man’s affliction—is now showing up in clinics filled with men in their 20s and 30s. The average age of pornography exposure is now 12 years old, and the negative effects of pornography use are worse for those exposed at younger ages. Men who use pornography frequently are also 31% less likely to get married.
Artificial intelligence threatens to further accelerate these problems. AI companion apps are being marketed as substitutes for friendship and romance, and there as yet are no effective legal barriers preventing young children from accessing these technologies. Nearly three-quarters of teens are using AI chatbots for companionship, and more than half are regular users. Frequent use of chatbots among adults is correlated with more loneliness and reduced social interaction.
It is no surprise, then, that real-life relationships and sex have grown increasingly unhealthy with the proliferation of smartphones, social media, AI chatbots, and online pornography. The health of our nation demands a robust policy response to reverse these negative effects, especially to protect the next generations and our nation’s future. We offer four concrete actions lawmakers can take:
- Congress must pass a national age-verification law for pornography websites, like the SCREEN Act. Such a law would protect children from being exposed to pornography by accidentally clicking a link, but would still allow adults to access this content using quick, anonymous age-verification methods. The Supreme Court cleared the path for a federal age-verification law last year when it upheld Texas’s state-level law in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. Twenty-five states have now passed such laws and the other half should follow, and we need Congress to finish the job with federal legislation to protect all children nationwide.
- AI companion chatbots must be age-restricted out of childhood entirely. The bipartisan GUARD Act recently passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee 22-0 and would protect minors under 18 from chatbots designed to simulate relationships. Congress should pass this critical protection. Some states are also considering laws like this.
- Congress should reform Section 230 to strip its liability protections from platforms that knowingly host and distribute obscene content or child sexual abuse material. The current legal framework allows tech companies to profit from exploitation without consequence. Adding a “Bad Samaritan” carveout would compel platforms to actively remove obscene and exploitative content from their feeds so children, and adults are not exposed on social media. The recently passed Take It Down Act is a step in the right direction, legally requiring platforms to remove deepfake intimate images within 48 hours of notice.
- Congress should pass a federal social media age-restriction like the ones Australia has implemented for children under 16 and the state of Florida has enacted for children under 14. Social media is engineered to be addictive and replaces in-person social development with dopamine loops. Protecting childhood from social media would go a long way in combating the declines in healthy human relationships.
These proposals are the kinds of commonsense protections Americans already expect for industries that affect our children and our public health, yet the most powerful behavior-shaping technologies in history have faced no guardrails. The MAHA movement, both the grassroots movements of parents and the lawmakers championing this cause, should demand otherwise and regulate the addictive screens that are making young Americans lonelier, less sexually functional, and less interested in building families.
This will require courage to stand up to the predatory technology industries profiting from America’s relational collapse. MAHA seems up for the task.
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