2012 Marked Global Peak in Human Births, Coinciding with Accelerating Digital Transformation

A recent tweet from Garry Tan, a prominent figure in the tech community, has drawn attention to a significant demographic turning point: the year 2012 may represent the highest number of human births ever recorded. Tan's tweet, which provocatively asked, "> Hm, what changed about society in 2012? 👀," linked to content from the forthcoming book "After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People" by economists Dean Spears and Michael Geruso. The book posits that 146 million children were born worldwide in 2012, a figure that has not been surpassed since and may never be again.

Spears and Geruso, economists and demographers at the University of Texas at Austin, argue that global birth rates have been consistently falling for decades, leading to a projected exponential decline in the world's population after it peaks around the 2080s. Their work challenges the long-held "population bomb" narrative, suggesting that depopulation, rather than overpopulation, presents a unique set of future challenges for humanity. The authors emphasize the importance of stabilizing the population, not through coercive measures, but by making parenting more accessible and appealing.

The period around 2012 also witnessed a rapid acceleration of technological and societal shifts. Smartphones, first introduced in 2007, became ubiquitous, profoundly altering daily life. By 2011, over 80% of Americans owned smartphones, leading to the rise of the "gig economy" with services like Uber and Lyft. This era also saw the exponential growth of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and the launch of Instagram and TikTok, transforming communication and information dissemination.

Beyond mobile technology, the early 2010s were marked by significant advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and big data. Deep learning discoveries in 2012 bolstered AI capabilities, leading to improvements in speech recognition and computer vision. Cloud-based data storage became prevalent, moving information from local servers to remote, accessible platforms. These technological leaps fundamentally reshaped industries, created new economic models, and laid the groundwork for further digital transformation in the subsequent decade.