Are people having less kids today because of financial woes? Are they avoiding childbearing out of an ideologically rooted fear of a future climate catastrophe? While those factors might have some say in the situation, a new study points to another cause: The rise of the smartphone.

The fertility rate began to decline around the same time the smartphone was introduced to the public. It’s at the point now, nearly twenty years later, that many colleges and universities are seeing significant drops in enrollment simply because there aren’t enough college-aged students in the application pool.

The study notes that the smartphone has become a go-to replacement for real-life connections. Aimee Picchi of CBS News reports:

A new research paper by Middlebury College economist Caitlin Myers found that Apple’s 2007 introduction of the iPhone accounted for 33% to 52% of the decline in the fertility rate. The reasons are rooted in the enormous social impact of putting a powerful new device in people’s pockets that not only tethered them to the internet but also rewired how we relate to each other — or whether we choose to relate at all.

Specifically, Myers posits that many people have turned to their phones as a substitute for in-person interactions. The technology also makes it easier to view pornography and find information on contraception, factors that have weighed on birth rates, according to the paper.

Myers also told CBS that the paper wasn’t trying to argue that the smartphone was solely to blame for the drop; other complicated factors need to be accounted for, too. For instance, the 2008 recession has long been cited as a contributing factor to the falling fertility rate. Nonetheless, the study’s conclusions certainly seem to track with common experience and observation. It’s easier these days to stay inside and scroll on a screen instead of going out and trying to meet people. The more time we spend on our phones, the less energy we direct toward meeting other people in the “real world.” With the advent of the smartphone, people have easy access to limitless pornography and social media feeds; this at least partially explains why young people in particular aren’t going out, getting married, and having kids.

Of course, people are still convening in public locales, but so-called “third places,” like gyms, coffee shops, or clubs, are sadly not often locus points of community like they were prior to the digital age. The smartphone promises to connect people but only virtually. In the end, the device tends to isolate people more than connect. And of course, one has to actually meet a potential spouse to have a chance at carrying on the human race.