This kind of influencer content comes in the wake of wider discussions about declining birth rates.
Globally, birth rates have dropped from 4.9 babies per woman in 1950 to 2.2 in 2025, with 106 countries now below the replacement rate of 2.1 , according to the UN World Population Prospects in 2025.
The US Secretary for Health, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has promoted some unproven health claims , recently spoke of a "fertility crisis" , arguing that in 1970, "men had twice the sperm count as our teenagers do today".
Large-scale analyses have suggested a significant global drop in sperm count and quality since the 1970s, but it isn't easy to make a direct comparison between young men today and the older men in the 1970s, age was not a focus of the study.
Overall, there is consensus that sperm count and quality is in decline, but some data suggests the decline may not be as drastic as feared.
According to a 2023 meta-review of falling sperm counts , the area is under-researched with the causes of sperm count decline and the impacts on birth rates remaining unclear.
Studies from 2024 and 2025 which looked at more localised populations in the USA and Denmark found no such drop in sperm count, and called for further research.
Meanwhile, manosphere-adjacent influencers like Andrew Huberman have discussed declining male sperm counts on their podcasts, with Joe Rogan warning of an impending "population collapse".
But there are many non-biological reasons for the birth rate decline. According to the UN's 2025 state of the world population report, 39% of people cited financial reasons for not having the number of kids they wanted, while one in five cited environmental and political instability.
Prof Channa Jayasena, a reproductive endocrinologist at Imperial College, London, believes there is room for valid concern around falling sperm counts, but says claims about male fertility problems are overblown on social media.
"There are certain challenges out there, but it's far from clear what those causes are," he says.