Featured Image Credit: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Topics: Japan, Elon Musk, World News, Twitter, Social Media
Ellie Kemp
Topics: Japan, Elon Musk, World News, Twitter, Social Media
Elon Musk has shared a solution as Japan reported its population is shrinking dangerously amid its latest government survey figures.
The tech billionaire took to social media to voice his opinion on the worrying trend.
Latest data from Japan show its population is shrinking faster than ever, with nearly one million more deaths than births recorded in 2024 - the biggest drop since records began. Only 686,000 babies were born, while 1.6 million people died.
Experts say long-standing problems like high living costs, stagnant wages, and rigid gender roles are pushing people away from having children.
Advert
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has called it a 'quiet emergency', promising policies like free childcare and flexible work hours to boost birth rates.
Yet even if things improve, it could take decades to reverse the trend.
Japan’s population is now about 124.3 million, with nearly 30 percent aged 65 and over. The working-age population has dropped to 60 percent, the BBC reports, putting pressure on pensions, healthcare and the economy. Many towns are becoming deserted, with millions of abandoned homes.
Taking to his social media platform X, formerly Twitter, Musk responded to a post about Japan's situation.
And he was keen to set out a solution.
"Japan will lose almost a million people this year. This demographic inevitably was set in motion half a century ago and has nothing to do with AI," he wrote.
"AI is the only hope for turning this around," he added, failing to elaborate any further.
In another tweet, responding to somebody talking about their misunderstanding of overpopulation, Musk responded: "Overpopulation is the most nihilistic lie ever told."
Musk - who has so far fathered 14 children - has previously been outspoken about his thoughts on procreation.
In 2022 he took to Twitter to claim that a population decline is more of a threat to humanity than global warming.
"Population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming," he posted. "Mark these words. (And I do think global warming is a major risk)."
In May, a clip of Musk on a 2019 episode of The Lex Fridman podcast resurfaced online.
There, he made his thoughts on sex 'without purpose' extremely clear.
"A massive amount of thinking, like truly stupendous amount of thinking, has gone into sex - without purpose, without procreation, which is actually quite a silly action in the absence of procreation," he told Fridman. "It's a bit silly, so why are you doing it? Because it makes the limbic system happy - that's why."
"But it's pretty absurd really," he continued. "A lot of computation has gone into, 'how can I do more of that', with the procreation not even being a factor."