Finance Minister Clyde Caruana is right to call Malta's fertility rate "the greatest challenge of our time". But if we are to be honest, the problem is not simply that families aren't having more children. The deeper truth is that we have fewer families to begin with. And fewer families because we have fewer marriages. And fewer marriages because we have fewer relationships. And fewer relationships because we are having less sex. And we are having less sex because we have fundamentally changed the way we spend our free time.
This is not a uniquely Maltese phenomenon. It is part of a broader social and cultural shift that has been documented in America, Japan, and across Europe. But Malta, with its small population and fragile demographic balance, is particularly vulnerable to the consequences.
The Institute for Family Studies has been tracking what it calls the "sex recession", a marked decline in sexual activity across age groups, but especially among young adults. In 1990, 55% of American adults reported having sex weekly. By 2024, that figure had fallen to just 37%. Among young adults aged 18-29, the share reporting no sex in the past year doubled from around 12% in 2010 to 24% in 2024.
Why? The data points to a collapse in steady partnering. Between 2014 and 2024, the share of young adults living with a partner, married or unmarried, fell from 42% to 32%. And because partnered adults have the most consistent sex, fewer partnerships mean less intimacy, fewer marriages, and ultimately fewer children.
The decline in sexual activity is not just about prudishness or shifting morals. It is about the way we live now. Between 2010 and 2019, the average time young adults spent with friends each week fell by nearly 50%, from 12.8 hours to 6.5 hours. The pandemic pushed it even lower. More time is now devoted to smartphones, social media, streaming, gaming, and pornography, all of which provide instant gratification without the unpredictability, vulnerability, or effort of real-world relationships.
As experts report, this "sexual counter-revolution" is driven by multiple forces. Young people today are more cautious, more risk-averse, and more aware of the potential downsides of intimacy. Economic precarity has also played a role: more young adults live with their parents than with a partner, and the cost of independent living has soared.
But the most striking factor is technological. The rise of the smartphone coincides almost perfectly with the steepest declines in dating, sex, and marriage. Social media, video games, and streaming services have displaced in-person socializing. The result is a generation that spends more time interacting with screens than with each other and whose romantic and sexual lives are correspondingly diminished.

The real challenge is rebuilding the relationship pipeline
Minister Caruana's warning is stark: in 1985, there were around 6,000 Maltese births per year. Today, there are about 3,000. Sixty percent of families who have one child never have a second. Wealthy families also are careful about adding more siblings.
The political temptation is to respond with financial incentives: tax breaks, child allowances, housing subsidies. These may help at the margins, but they do not address the upstream causes. If fewer people are forming couples in the first place, no amount of baby bonuses will reverse the trend.
We need to ask ourselves: how do we create the conditions for more people to meet, date, form relationships, and marry? How do we make it easier and more appealing for couples to spend time together, away from screens? How do we restore the social infrastructure that once brought young people into contact with each other in real life?
If we're serious about reversing the demographic decline, we must stop thinking in terms of isolated "measures" and start reshaping the environment in which relationships are born and nurtured. This is not a matter of sprinkling a few tax credits here and there. It's about making it easier for people to meet, connect, and build a life together.
That begins with the spaces we inhabit. Our towns and villages should be redesigned to bring people face to face, not keep them sealed in cars or behind apartment doors. Walkable streets, lively squares, and community events are not luxuries, they are the infrastructure of human connection. Without them, we are left with the sterile anonymity of scrolling through strangers on a screen.
We also need to confront the elephant in the room: our addiction to devices. Malta has run public health campaigns against smoking and drink-driving. Why not against the erosion of our social lives by the smartphone? This is not about demonising technology, but about reclaiming balance and reminding ourselves that no app can replace the warmth of a shared meal or the spark of a first conversation.
Housing policy must also be part of the equation. When young adults are trapped in their childhood bedrooms because rents are exorbitant, relationships are delayed, marriages postponed, and children never conceived. Giving under 35s a fair shot at independent living is not just an economic policy but a demographic one.
And while we're at it, let's equip our young people with the skills to sustain the relationships they do form. Communication, empathy, and emotional intelligence are not "soft" skills. They are the bedrock of lasting partnerships. Schools and universities should treat them as seriously as maths or science.
If we want more children, we need more couples. If we want more couples, we need more relationships. And if we want more relationships, we must create a Malta where people have the time, the space, and the opportunity to fall in love and stay in love. Everything else is window dressing.
It is tempting to see low fertility as an economic problem: if only people had more money, they would have more children. Higher-income couples do tend to have more children, but they also tend to have more stable relationships, more time together, and less digital distraction.
If Malta is to avoid the demographic cliff, affluent political leaders need to start recognising the demographic problem and set an example. We must address the upstream causes: the decline in relationships, the retreat from marriage, the collapse in sexual intimacy, and the digital colonization of our free time.
This will require a cultural shift as much as a policy shift. It will require leaders willing to talk not just about fertility rates, but about the way we live, love, and connect. And it will require all of us to reclaim some of the time and attention we have ceded to our screens, and to reinvest it in each other.

Ovidiu Tierean is a Senior Advisor at PKF Malta