There are plenty of hypotheses as to what the Great Filter might be. Perhaps every sentient species destroys itself with nukes or bioweapons. Perhaps AI always tends to wipe out its organic creators before retreating into inaccessible virtual worlds. Perhaps there’s a race of killer robots silently cruising between the stars, slaughtering every organic species that looks like it might one day rise to become a threat.
Or perhaps it’s the smartphone. In previous decades, fertility decline was due to couples choosing to have fewer children; now, it’s increasingly about people never forming couples at all. The isolating effects of social media are one obvious culprit; it’s very hard to conceive a child while you’re on your phone.1Myers and Hooper (2026) found that “access to the iPhone reduced births by 4.5–8.0% at ages 15–19 and 3.2–6.6% at ages 20–24”. Breen et al. (2026) found that “the expansion of 3G coverage [in Nigeria] during the study period led to a decline in fertility, corresponding to a 7% reduction in the annual probability of a woman having a birth.”
Given the timing and the microeconomic evidence, smartphones are the likeliest explanation for why instead of leveling out near 2, the total fertility rate in rich countries — and, increasingly, in middle-income countries — has busted right through that floor and headed down toward zero. Smartphones at least help to explain why Latin America now has an even lower birth rate than the EU.
Even without vertical short-form video, social media might still be enough to shrink the human race. Online interactions substitute for offline ones, but only one of the two can make a baby. But it’s hard to deny that vertical short-form video is even more isolating than other online activities — in the case of heavenbanning, it’s almost solipsistic. At least on X you can meet your mutuals. In the brave new world of AI-generated personalized short-form content, your “mutuals” will be made of matrices and computer chips.
Personally, I don’t like vertical short-form video because I think it’s pretty boring. But the fact that it could represent the euthanasia of our species seems like an additional downside. Perhaps it’s in the fundamental nature of intelligence to hack its own reward function — to find a way to give up striving and building and loving, and to simply hit the dopamine button until it starves itself ecstatically to death.
The next time you look at the night sky, you should wonder if instead of star empires and unearthly paradises, it’s simply a vast graveyard of short-form video fans. Such an outcome would be much gentler, but hardly less cataclysmic, than the end of Revelation.
My main issue with these explanations of the Great Filter is the inevitable convergence with a 99%+ probability instead of a Filter By A Thousand Challenges with 10% probability each or an unreached challenge (e.g. Yudkowsky’s 31 Laws Of Fun facing saturation of human capabilities or of problems to which capabilities can be applied. Or a conservative argument like “It’s a wholesale post-AGI automation, not mere Tiktok, that RELIABLY destroys meaning”). As for Tiktok/short-form content/other superstimuli, they would have to rule in not just the majority of Westerners[1] becoming addicts, but, say, the majority of North Koreans becoming addicts.
China, Japan and South Korea have their share of issues like the educational arms race which disincentivised childbirth. Chinese government once explicitly adopted the One-child policy.
>As for Tiktok/short-form content/other superstimuli, they would have to rule in not just the majority of Westerners[1] becoming addicts, but, say, the majority of North Koreans becoming addicts.
And not only that, there are plenty of Westerners who consciously and successfully reject TikTok and short form content in general. The great filter would have to kill everybody or at least reduce human potential to the point it never recovers. We’re nowhere close to that with short form video.
I believe great filter is a kind of broad shape of a thing rather than one specific thing, and i believe the shape of the thing is: cost of (Great Filter Candidate) > benefit of (overcoming Great Filter Candidate) + [some metric representing the badness of the filter]; or cost of (Great Filter Candidate) - benefit to overcome (Great Filter Candidate) > [some metric representing the badness of the filter]. Therefore one could say that Tiktok is a Great Filter, as is the Ocean, the Vastness and General Unfriendliness of Space, etc.
I think Tiktok is one of the faces of the Dual Phd Problem / a distributed, slow burn manifestation of the Unabomber manifesto: cost of (digesting huge amounts of complexity) > benefit of (having digested huge amounts of complexity) at the margin. Illustrative example: Suppose I figured out how the lithium supply chain is orchestrated end to end, including all the edge cases, best mine locations, how to source chemicals for processing, offtake etc. What would I get? Probably not much since there’s an incumbent. But scrolling Tiktok....
TikTok as the Great Filter, Noah Smith:
Gotta cater to Marl after all…
My main issue with these explanations of the Great Filter is the inevitable convergence with a 99%+ probability instead of a Filter By A Thousand Challenges with 10% probability each or an unreached challenge (e.g. Yudkowsky’s 31 Laws Of Fun facing saturation of human capabilities or of problems to which capabilities can be applied. Or a conservative argument like “It’s a wholesale post-AGI automation, not mere Tiktok, that RELIABLY destroys meaning”). As for Tiktok/short-form content/other superstimuli, they would have to rule in not just the majority of Westerners[1] becoming addicts, but, say, the majority of North Koreans becoming addicts.
China, Japan and South Korea have their share of issues like the educational arms race which disincentivised childbirth. Chinese government once explicitly adopted the One-child policy.
>As for Tiktok/short-form content/other superstimuli, they would have to rule in not just the majority of Westerners[1] becoming addicts, but, say, the majority of North Koreans becoming addicts.
And not only that, there are plenty of Westerners who consciously and successfully reject TikTok and short form content in general. The great filter would have to kill everybody or at least reduce human potential to the point it never recovers. We’re nowhere close to that with short form video.
I believe great filter is a kind of broad shape of a thing rather than one specific thing, and i believe the shape of the thing is: cost of (Great Filter Candidate) > benefit of (overcoming Great Filter Candidate) + [some metric representing the badness of the filter]; or cost of (Great Filter Candidate) - benefit to overcome (Great Filter Candidate) > [some metric representing the badness of the filter]. Therefore one could say that Tiktok is a Great Filter, as is the Ocean, the Vastness and General Unfriendliness of Space, etc.
I think Tiktok is one of the faces of the Dual Phd Problem / a distributed, slow burn manifestation of the Unabomber manifesto: cost of (digesting huge amounts of complexity) > benefit of (having digested huge amounts of complexity) at the margin. Illustrative example: Suppose I figured out how the lithium supply chain is orchestrated end to end, including all the edge cases, best mine locations, how to source chemicals for processing, offtake etc. What would I get? Probably not much since there’s an incumbent. But scrolling Tiktok....