 Is Instagram to blame for ruining South Korean society? This celebrity mathematician seems to think so. So let's see if he did the math. Yeah, Chung-Sung Jae is a celebrity mathematician and on YouTube. He also does some videos with like K-pop stars. He's like the youthful millennial mathematician in South Korea. And basically he went on a super viral rant on his YouTube channel, blaming Instagram for declining birth rates and potentially in the future the long-term decline of South Korean society just because not numerically it'll vanish. Wow, well you know what? I guess it's kind of cool that South Korea even has a famous mathematician. I can't even think of a famous mathematician in America. I can think of one, Terrence Tau. He teaches at UCLA. That's the only one I've ever heard of. The closest thing I can think of in America, Andrew, and it's more science-based is Bill Nye the Science Guy and maybe Neil deGrasse Tyson. All right, everybody. We're going to get into the comments section. We'll give you our takeaways. Can you blame Instagram? Can you blame social media for the declining birth rate in South Korea? Let's talk about it. Please hit that like button. Check out other episodes from the Hop Hop Boys. Real quick, we have to establish the facts, Andrew, because Chung-Sung Jae went on a crazy rant on his YouTube channel, right? But he's going on the rant because he sees the numbers, right? The numbers mean that South Korea has a 0.78 birth rate, right? That means two people are having like 0.78 kids because a lot of people are not even having kids, right? You need 2.1 to have a healthy replacement rate for your society. So it's almost like closer to like a third of where it needs to be. No. So this is definitely an issue, guys. We've kind of touched on this before, but this is kind of the first time that a celebrity or influencer themselves has pointed out such a problem. And I do think because he's a mathematician, because he knows the numbers, because he is very intelligent, very smart, obviously people are taking his word a little differently. Also, his fan base is probably pretty nerdy. Yeah. And also, this is a pan East Asian problem right now, Andrew, birth rates that are below 2.1. But South Korea actually has the lowest birth rate in recorded world history. You know, this is really interesting right off the bat is because I thought South Koreans like loved each other. I thought they were so proud of being South Korean. And I'm sure they are. They're very nationalistic, generally known to be. But then they, I guess they don't want to have kids and having kids. There's so many issues with having kids in the city, especially, but we're going to get into it. Oh, Andrew, there are so many issues, but Chung-Sung Jim thinks it's Instagram. He basically said, back in the day, we didn't even have the word omakase. Now everybody's talking about omakase, Insta, Gulf. It was all unimaginable. We were all poor back then. We were all poor, but Koreans gave birth to a lot of babies. But now we're all living well, right? We all got good lifestyles. How come we're not giving birth? Yeah. He continued to say all the days were better before Instagram. So basically he was blaming it on Instagram. Everybody's showing perfect lives there and everybody else feeling like their life is inadequate. But actually everybody is faking it for everybody else. So it's this whole cyclical thing where everybody's faking a perfect life, making other people feel insecure and making them not want to have kids because they're like, well, if I can't have that life for my kids, why even have kids at all? Let's get into the comment section because I think there's a lot to unpack here. Somebody said all places with low birth rates seem to have people crammed together in high density working long hours. Solutions, spread people out, work fewer hours, make single family homes affordable, and the birth rate will rise dramatically. And somebody said, thank you, Captain Obvious. Do you know how difficult it is to reverse those trends? Yeah, I think what he means by Instagram is ruining society. It's that Instagram is raising everybody's expectations and when you wanna live a better life and look better, then you're starting to think more about yourself and less about the next generation because it is true that having anything more than one kid is gonna put a significant sacrifice on your life. Well, your life of the both the parents will probably have to rotate around the kids. Yeah, unless you're hyper rich, essentially having two kids, it's like, bro, you gotta really start sacrificing things. So, Andrew, as much as some people in South Korea agreed with Chung-Sung Jae, some people really went against him as well, saying he himself is like 46 years old, not married, no kids, so who is he to judge? What if he's like, yeah, I know. It's because I like math. Now I'm trying to have a baby with math. None of the girls, they like the K-pop guys and the K-drama guys, they don't want the mathematician. Why don't they love K-math? Somebody said they have low birth rates because they don't want to have kids. Do you need any more of a reason than that? If you don't have kids yourself, why are you complaining so much? Probably no kid wants to have babies with someone like him, probably because he's ugly. He kind of looks like Thanos or Hulk and not in the good way. Dang, yeah, man. There's a harsh comment. Geez, calm down. Well, the reason why some people were attacking Chung-Sung Jae Andrew is because they felt like possibly, and by the way, obviously, I don't speak Korean, so it's very difficult for me to catch the nuance. I can just read the articles and the comments, guys, that maybe he was blaming women because women typically are more than ones possibly caught up into lifestyle inflation or wanting to live the life that they see on Instagram or at least that's a stereotype. Wait, you're telling me that a 46-year-old single straight man is going on a rant and it's kind of directed towards women? I'm shocked, David. I am so shocked. Oh, my goodness. So somebody said, why blame women for wanting the Instagram life? Why not make it more comfortable for women to give birth, maternity leave, help with diapers, rent for families? Korea is such an expensive place to live and I'm sure that all those things also hold true for a lot of East Asian countries, obviously like Tokyo, Shanghai, et cetera. Yeah, I do think and I will, I don't know if he said this in a rant because I don't speak Korean, so anybody who speaks Korean, let me know if he said this. But I think social media is making people selfish and the more selfish you are, the less likely you are to have kids because kids is one thing you have to start thinking about and you almost have to put them over your own wants. So like your own comforts are going to come second to taking care of the kids. Right, that's why a lot of parents, they're not necessarily on the coolest fashion and the newest trends. Exactly. Because they just do not care, right? If you want to be super hyper popular on social media and you want to go out and travel all the time and look cool, it is very hard to have kids. So here's some more critical comments. Somebody said, he just sounds like a conservative pastor at one of those cash cow mega churches that is kind of like fake and just designed to get cash flow in the Korean community. I don't like it. Like I don't like how Chung-Sung Jae is sounding. And then somebody else said, yeah, but this pastor is right. It is Instagram mixed. But the truth is, there is also some of the Korean inferiority complex because like they just never think we are good enough so we're always like trying to be better, but it's also fueled by us not feeling good enough. Oh, so by the pursuit of always trying to get better, that means you will never have time to have a kid. Yeah. I guess it's true that, you know, I think various Asian nations have a desire to get better at everything. Like I noticed that, for example, Andrew Chinese people, they do want to do good with money and school in their career, but it is true that Chinese people care generally. I mean, I think it's changing with the newer generation. They don't care about looks as much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what it is? It's true that people, one thing that a lot of people don't take enough pride in is being a good parent because I think a lot of people are striving to be great themselves as individuals, but it is true if the father and mother both are striving as hard as possible as they can. You mean to be the prettiest, to have the best career, to be the coolest lawyer, the coolest businessman. Yeah, and they have no time to literally have a kid. Right. But you can still value being a good parent. That is so something that should be rewarded, but there has to be a reward system for that. Somebody said, I'm a Korean woman and I'm sick of the constant cooking and cleaning in a traditional household. Like if you knew all the responsibilities and oftentimes the oldest brother-in-law has to live with the parents, so literally not only does the woman have to cook and clean all day, but she has to deal with the criticism from her mother-in-law. It's just such a bad deal. Why would they want to subject themselves to that? So this is a criticism of a lot of just like, I would say Asian societies in general, right? But you know, to varying levels, maybe some societies have this more intensely than others. Somebody said, no, it's actually all about bringing kids into a society that seems very violent and volatile nowadays in 2023. Oh. Is that interesting? I mean... Is Korean society violent? I don't know. Let me know in the comments down below. I never... Certainly possibly America is though. Or Western society. I think America is violent. I didn't know South Korea was. You guys let me know. Yeah. Somebody said, humans are intelligent. They see that the world is headed towards overpopulation. So they're just slowing it down on a global level. And somebody said, no, they're selfish. In expensive countries, people want comfortable lives and they don't really care about macro population replacement statistics. They don't even care about what the industry machinery needs in 20 years. They just want to live the best lives for themselves. Andrew, is that true? That in expensive countries, it just doesn't make sense to have more than one kid? No. I think in a lot of expensive countries, people are pursuing dopamine and quick release dopamine. But that quick release dopamine is not having kids. Dude, trust me. Kids is just... Even like, to be honest, getting married, I heard is still... It's a struggle. You have to work at staying married and being happy and communicating all the time. And if that doesn't bring you immediate dopamine, then nowadays, people don't want to chase it. And possibly that's why so many marriages statistically fail within a seven-year span. Somebody said, oh, you mean the people are selfish? What about the governments and companies are selfish for them wanting to have everybody to have more kids just so they can save their industries? Because they were saying that the governments want to stay a powerful country so they need 2.1 and the industries need workers so they want everybody to have 2.1 but they don't necessarily care if those families are happy, either. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess that's just part of being in a country. I don't know. Somebody said poor countries have way too many kids, then they have miserable lives, and then they have more kids. But someone said, but poor countries are sometimes really happy because they have a different lifestyle and expectations. And someone says, but if they're poor and they're happy, how can the country improve and get its economics and standard of living up because they've already adjusted their expectations to meet where they're at? I don't know, everybody. You let me know in the comments down below if you have an answer for any of those questions. All right, Andrew. What is your opinion? Like I said, we don't bat a thousand, especially this article was difficult to translate because the original video was in Korean, Andrew. What do you think about what Chung Sung Jae said? My opinion is, obviously, to blame it on Instagram is kind of stupid. Is he wrong, though? But just to blame it, I think on social media, definitely take some blame. He blamed it on Omakase. But even before social media, this trend started to happen. Okay. I'm saying even 10 years ago, 11, 12 years ago, before Instagram was popular, was it Facebook? I don't know. No one was really trying to be an influencer on Facebook. What? My space? Not really. So I guess what I'm saying is that this seems like a natural progression. What you have to do is promote a family unit, okay? And you have to make it easier and more inspiring and more encouraging for young families to have kids. And if people have to move outside of the city because everybody wants to live that city life as long as possible, but if you have to move out, you have to make the suburbs better and you have to somehow help out families that want to raise kids. Do you think that this trend was like 20, 30, 40 years in the making because kind of shows like married with children? And obviously, this is in America. This wasn't in Korea. It didn't seem like making up, having a family was going to be tight. Yeah. I mean, they kind of looked like, you know, miserable and promudgony. I mean, you know what it is? There is a lot of anti-marriage content. It's not that that's not true about marriages that it's hard. You get pissed off at each other. You wake up in the morning. Sometimes you want to divorce. But I guess the whole point is that you're united around something larger, whether it's building a family or the church, whatever church it is. I guess that's the reason. So I don't know. I mean, I think clearly what he said was partially true, but it seems ridiculous to only blame it on omakase. You know what it is? That was more like a symptom than the actual poor systemic issue. He's the omakase. He's the omakase. No, and you know that Chung-Sung Jae had to take some chicks out on dates to omakase on the first date, you know? Because that's the thing right now. The Korean barbecue and omakase. But I think like I guess a lot of people feel like that this is an issue and a lot of people feel like that there truly is like a movement away from like families or traditional family structures. But nobody knows what to do about it. Nobody knows what to do. So I don't know. You let me know in the comments now. Are we doomed? Is there a mass? Is there a fixing it or a society just going to end in 300 years anyway guys? I think there's some legitimate arguments on all sides. Let us know what you think in the comment section below. Keep it civil. Until next time, we're the Hop Hop Boys. We out. Peace.