There are real problems in Japan and South Korea, but the headlines are clickbait. Everything is exaggerated for engagement. There's truth there but you have to dismiss about 2/3rds of the sensationalism to get a good feel for how serious the problem actually is. The same goes for Europe and North America.

I mean, we're in deep shit in Japan in a number of ways.

More xenophobic people and anti-foreigner policies, higher costs of status renewal (they claimed to bring in line with Germany and other countries despite the fact that our salaries are way lower), etc. are driving foreigners away. Foreigners are taking jobs no one else is (it's generally an immigration requirement for a work visa is that you can't take a job a Japanese could do, roughly). Bus drivers, elder carers, hospital workers, etc. Rather than look at the actual issues and do something about it (voter participation, particularly among the young, is abysmal), they just keep voting LDP that keeps enriching the rich and powerful and not doing much to actually help.

There are all kinds of systemic issues around working conditions, gender roles, and other things that hold families back. Almost everyone moves to Tokyo or another big city for university and never comes back because the only jobs outside are farming, fishing, forestry, and factories, more or less. People like me who do move to be a part of a small community have their companies say "oopsie, we didn't mean work from anywhere; you have to be in the Tokyo office now" which is basically impossible (my union is fighting the company who retained a lawfirm, so who knows where this goes). There's no stability outside of the city. This is driving up prices on a number of things. Childcare is also over-burdened in those areas so one parent often has to quit, at least for a while, if they want to start a family. This only gets worse (whereas where I live, they pay people to move here and we have free/subsidized daycare for kids with open slots).

There's still more that I could write about. Inflation is rampant and wages don't keep up. Salaries were long flat, but so were prices until corona followed by Russia's invasion. I don't have much hope. It's gotten me (over a decade here, permanent resident, etc.) thinking it's time to go, which is not a statement I thought I would say; I had planned to retire and spend the rest of my life here. Now, I'm trying to get a job somewhere like Norway where I can do a silly thing like at least vote in local elections after 3 years, unlike Japan which is never in most places and the xenophobes are trying to remove it in the few places it does exist (despite us paying the same taxes, pension, and everything else).

ttl;dr - current gov keeps making rich richer, quality of life is generally falling, and something's going to give eventually be it the political system, the economy, etc. since line can't always go up and inequality breeds contempt.

Big clickbait. The "concern" is that without an increasing population then we can't pay for the benefits of the older population, therefore anything that slows growth means doom, collapse, whatever. We really do have to get our fiscal house in order, but overall cough cough there is enough wealth to take care of our society.

Sudden large population changes can cause problems. Everyone seems to inherently understand the issue with rapid growth, but I often see people saying rapid decline is totally fine and sometimes even a good thing, actually.

Every job suddenly being understaffed would be a challenge. Every piece of infrastructure suddenly being oversized creates inefficiencies. National pensions take money from workers and give it to the elderly, which only works if workers far outnumber the elderly. Some countries are headed to a 1:1 ratio and China is estimated to soon have 5 dependents for every 1 worker. Pension plans will go bankrupt.

All of this will happen all at once, everywhere, in a few decades. I don't think it's going to create apocalyptic scenarios, but people were freaking out over gas prices being twice as expensive, imagine what they're going to do when their pension payments stop.

Any time you see a headlines about population collapse, remember that the hidden complaint is that wages will rise when there are less people in the job market.

So many business models are predicated on hiring low skilled, failed individuals to do menial labor for close to nothing in a job they can’t afford to quit.

When there are more people who are highly educated, slop jobs disappear which is a good thing.

The population of Earth has doubled in my lifetime. Population growth is only slowing if you exclude brown people and focus on countries that 1)are wealthy and 2) don't allow immigration. These 'demographic bombs' are the result of jingoism, immigration controls, and racism; they are entirely artificial.

Slow population growth is a crisis for capitalism not humanity. This is because capitalism requires infinite growth and the biggest engine that sustains that delusion is population growth. Just look who is freaking out about it.

Gotta check them sources, and view things with a critical lens.

Godzilla has been sighted on the move towards Tokyo Bay.

Regarding Japan, I've seen many worrying investigations by YouTubers. Countless empty towns. Some people are moving back, but not enough.

It's always click bait, but sometimes* it's based on real problems that could lead to those things. Let's take three examples because I like to piss off sycophants everywhere:

1. CHINA'S ECONOMY WILL COLLAPSE WITHIN FIVE TO TEN YEARS BECAUSE OF THE EVIL COMMUNIST REGIME AND NOTHING CAN SAVE IT.

Gordon Chang is a racist far-right white supremacist that uses this supposed Chinese ancestry to doomsay about China, and has done for literally decades. He has always been wrong. Every single prediction he has ever made. Every single one has been proven wrong. He has not ever had a single thing he has ever published come true.

Despite this, he is one of the US Media's foremost experts on China, having been featured by every single major media outlet for the last nearly 30 years. Nearly every single story you have ever read on 'China's imminent economic collapse,' or 'The Chinese Stock market just collapsed,' or 'China's economy is a paper dragon,' or 'China just ended their real estate market,' or 'China has five years left to kowtow to western demands before it collapses,' is based on his work, as well as a select group of others that claim to be experts on China, have published work on China for decades, and have never once gotten a single prediction correct at any point in their careers.

Why is this narrative being pushed so hard and why does half of lemmy (and easily 70+% of western audiences) still fall for it day after day, year after year, despite the link I used being TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD?

Well one, racism, but two, if western media allows the concept that another way of life could work, and is working better than the current status quo, those that benefit from the current status quo might lose something. So hundreds of billions are spent every single year making sure that headlines from people like this keep coming. Constantly. And no one is allowed to question why or point out that their predictions have always failed to come true and are based on nothing more than the 'feeling' that communist rule leads to failure and suffering.

2. JAPAN'S POPULATION IS COLLAPSING AND SOON GLORIOUS NIPPON WILL HAVE TO HAVE FOREIGNERS!!11!!!!

This is real. This is real data. Japan's population has declined every single census for two decades now. The average age of Japanese citizens is only going up, and it is going up exponentially quickly, suggesting it is not just a lack of new births, but also a lack of resources to keep younger people alive longer. Thought honestly, I repeat myself.

Now why does it get so much news coverage, especially in the west?

2a. Japan is what a lot of racists want the west to be. As a far-right ethnostate dedicated to profit and social order above all other possible concerns, it is a blueprint for how a lot of western fascists want the west to be. Similar to Israel. So if it is failing, then that means that ideology might be a failure -- liberals who do not want fascism like pointing this out, and point out the 'solution' is immigration and more open borders which solves the totally random and not at all concerning declining birth rate. Which ignores the roots of the problem.

2b. Racism. Japan is failing not because of its socioeconomic system or politics; but because the japanese cannot handle the superior white idealized socioeconomic system; and clearly white men need to come in and save the Japanese from themselves, both through 'marriage' and through taking over the government. Don't worry, it's not miscegenation if it's white people doing it.

3. THE UK IS COLLAPSING AND IT'S THE IMMIGRANTS FAULT.

The UK is collapsing. Literally. Its economy cannot survive the next ten years on its current trajectory, as reasonably predicted by people who were against Brexit.

But it's not because of immigrants. It's just capitalism again. And it's being blamed on immigrants because of racism.

No.

They are just going to entire a population and economic decline that plays out over decades.

But clickbait headlines want to make this seem like magically in 2050 the population will halve, because drama.

Here's the science and data for south Korea https://sites.google.com/view/sources-korea-is-over/ And the video its connected to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk&t=89

The Japan one I've only heard coming from people bitching about Lawson's new one item bentos that make cheap American food look like fine French cuisine. "OMG the empire is collapsing because a konbini bento is making us look like we are all broke."

Just the usual Russian and Chinese digital warfare.

Its so rediculous because there is tons of potential immigrants which they can bring in at any time. Im not sure about the other places but they can get babies real quick in the us if wealth disparity was no so logrithmic.