Half the men in Seattle are never-married singles, census data shows

Patrick Boyle has looked at causes of decline in the total fertility rate around the world and concluded reduction in the formation of couples (married or not) is a major cause.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ispyUPqqL1c

See also "The Global Collapse of Coupling and Fertility"

https://www.ggd.world/p/the-global-collapse-of-coupling-and

I wonder if the ultimate cost (in lives never born) of technologies like smartphones and Tinder will be. If a significant part of the entire youth cohort never learns to interact with the other sex in the real world, we might be looking at a pandemics of loneliness - and at subsequent global birth deficits in eight to nine figures.

I've come to a conclusion that the solution may be somewhat radical.

If coupling is reduced, it should become the norm for women to have and raise children alone, or at least without a male partner. This increases the burden on women, so at the same time the number of children they must support would have to decrease.

This could be achieved technologically, by filtering sperm to remove Y chromosome carrying gametes. As a result, the female/male ratio of newborns would dramatically increase. At the US TFR of 1.66, a 2:1 female to male ratio would be more than enough to maintain the population. Even higher ratios could be imagined, leading to an almost entirely female population.

Social engineering to reach this state is left as an exercise to the science fiction writer.

cool idea. once we have mandated ivf as the only way of conception we can probably start selecting sperm from populations with higher than average iq too.

A mandate would be only one way to reach that state, and I don't think it would be a good way. Better would be a situation where female children become desired over male children, for example because they have better career prospects. In a female dominated society, discrimination against men could be a thing. Today, already, female students on average outperform male students in school and university.