[mywittyname]

> One study showed how the arrival of cable television in Indian villages in the 2000s led to a moderate fall in fertility. Soap operas depicting urban, middle-class women with small families may have changed norms (though some wonder whether people were just watching TV rather than having sex).

The latter part seems like the most meaningful cause world wide. Sex is a boredom activity and we just aren't bored in the slightest, ever. I think most married people know that long power outages are the most romantic thing that can happen (though, less now with cell phones).

[fred_is_fred]

This has a background and actually was done intentionally in Brazil: https://publications.iadb.org/en/soap-operas-and-fertility-e...

[red-iron-pine]

> Sex is a boredom activity

making a pretty strong statement about yourself there mon ami. that ain't the case for plenty of people

and keep in mind that India has arranged marriages

[wolfi1]

when there is a power outage it is most likely that the cell towers are down, too

[kuhsaft]

Cell phone towers and communication systems have backup power for emergency communication during power outages.

If you have backup power for your router and ONT/Modem, you should also still have internet service during a power outage. The ISP-owned ONT for a place I lived had a little lead-acid battery attached to it, and during power outages I still had internet service.

[toast0]

I live somewhere with two nines of utility power reliability, I mention that to say everybody's backup (or lack thereof) is well tested. I've got UPSes on most of my computers and a standby generator that pops on after about 10 seconds. DSL from my ILEC has zero backup power; sync drops when the power drops. I don't know about the cable. Municipal fiber doesn't drop so far, but I haven't had a long outage since I got it; my ISP has a generator where they route customer packets. We get cell coverage for about 4-8 hours, depending on which network you're on and if the outage started overnight coverage usually lasts until people wake up.

After that, communicating with the outside world is hard for most people. Time to make babies ... anyway it's often cold, so snuggling is likely.

[chrismorgan]

ACT terminates the fibre outside (possibly terminating a few services at once), and only spec their backup battery for 1–1½ hour (I have observed about 1½ hours on what should be a fresh battery).

Other ISPs I’ve used in Hyderabad (Hireach, Airtel) terminate the fibre inside, so you can put whatever backup you like—I have a small ₹1,000 thing which kept the Hireach one going for around 4½ hours, and the Airtel one for 1¾ hours. (Still haven’t got a proper inverter, not so convenient when renting.) The connection always worked until my battery ran out.

[btilly]

Most power outages are local, not regional. And cellphone towers will work at a surprising distance.

Therefore my experience has been that cellphones tend to remain up, even though the power is down.

[fhdkweig]

In the US, cell towers have battery backups so emergency calls can still go through. I imagine most countries do too.

[ssl-3]

My experience in the US is that when the power drops, the cell networks immediately become mostly useless.

I've theorize that they become overburdened by the pocket supercomputers that automatically start using it instead of local wifi.