The average American now holds onto their smartphone for 29 months, according to a recent survey by Reviews.org, and that cycle is getting longer. The average was around 22 months in 2016.
While squeezing as much life out of your device as possible may save money in the short run, especially amid widespread fears about the strength of the consumer and job market, it might cost the economy in the long run, especially when device hoarding occurs at the level of corporations.
Research released by the Federal Reserve last month concludes that each additional year companies delay upgrading equipment results in a productivity decline of about one-third of a percent, with investment patterns accounting for approximately 55% of productivity gaps between advanced economies. The good news: businesses in the U.S. are generally quicker to reinvest in replacing aging equipment. The Federal Reserve report shows that if European productivity had matched U.S. investment patterns starting in 2000, the productivity gap between the U.S and European economic heavyweights would have been reduced by 29 percent for the U.K., 35 percent for France, and 101% for Germany.
device hoarding
That is not what this is called.
Consumers are being Anticapitalist! This is not a recession! We didn’t fire half the country for people to spend less!! Think about our growing profits!!
Oh, look, another example of “competition” ruining another feat of humanity
Fuck the economy.
“A population with skyrocketing costs of living and stagnant wages cutting unnecessary spending, and that’s a problem”
Maybe “the economy” should give some more money back to working class people, ya dingdongs
The consequence of squeezing every last cent from people
Now I want to hold my devices longer so the economy destroys even faster
29 months is long? What good for “the economy”? New phone every year?
I kept my last phone (pixel 3A) for 6 years. Only got rid of it when it finally stopped charging.
18 months was the figure I once read somewhere. Absolutely ridiculous.
Fuck the economy. It can eat my ass.
Also with moore’s law’s death, why the fuck would anybody believe this productivity bullshit? Any device from 5 years ago can do what a device today can.
One more thing, wtf is this entitlement from electronics importers. Apple, google, samsung, etc can all fuck off until they move manufacturing back to north america.
PEOPLE AREN’T GIVING US MORE MONEY!
Great! Now we’re getting blamed for wrecking the economy because we aren’t spending enough of our minimum wages on $2000 phones often enough.
Couldn’t have anything to do with redistributing over a trillion dollars a year to Sociopathic Oligarchs, and not taxing them. How about forcing them to give each one of us a new phone every year. Or how about this: Just give us health care, like every other country in the world.
Not buying enough new phones? Go fuck yourself.
Buy! No money, only buy!
Holy shit keeping a device longer than 2 years is “device hoarding” now? Thats fucking nuts.
How do you invest so much money in a device like that and not make it last? I’ve got one phone I use for work calls thats 10 years old. People are still shocked I dont even have a case on it.
This is blaming consumers for companies not doing a better job at planned obsolescence.
“device hoarding”
The article about generational wealth is right around the corner I’m sure!
My last phone up until a couple months ago was from 2017, apparently I am just a mega hoarder. Don’t look at the pile of miscellaneous bits of tech, the Omnisiah demands I collect the shinnies.
Honestly, if I could just upgrade the CPU and replace the battery every once in a while, is still be using a Note 3 or nexus 5. Those first few generations of notes were awesome.
I still miss my Note 3 and Note 5. I’m using the Note 9 now, and even that is starting to become unbearably slow. Thankfully the battery is still good enough for me, but even Firefox constantly freezing is ridiculous
Yeah, fuck that. I’ll keep my device as long as possible because of course I would! Try for five years.
“Hording”… The fucking nerve to say that… I am actually offended. Whatever happened to “recycle, reduce, reuse”? What could possible be more irresponsible than constantly replacing your devices?
When every single business is slowly getting to the point where they need you to be a consumer whore just to survive, yes.
When you have some free time, you might find it interesting to read about Edward Bernays.
I’ve always been aware of propaganda, but had never heard of him. Thanks for that. Was an interesting and somewhat horrifying read.
I do everything in my power to avoid ads and develop an informed opinion but there is no escaping the influence of at least some social manipulations. I suppose its easy for me to forget sometimes how much others are influenced by that too.
…hands up anyone using laptops or desktops older than 15 years?.. …right here, bitches…lol…
I got laptops from 2008 and 2013, still work just fine 😁
I’ve got a “refurbished” Dell laptop that’s about 15yrs old. Some ex-corp model. 4C/8T, 16" 1900x1200-ish display, Nvidia GPU, 20G RAM, and it’s still going strong except for the battery which stopped holding a charge. I could get a new battery but I use the system rarely and just for browsing/email so running it off the AC brick is fine. It’s been running Linux Mint for as long as I can remember. My phone is a cheapo model from 2021 and it is also fine. The only reason I might replace it is if the battery tanks like with my other phones (planned obsolescence) or if I finally decide it’s mandatory to up my security/privacy game and need a phone that runs GrapheneOS, which means a Pixel. An old used one.
Yup got that too. Flipped it to Bazzite, and setting up an old laptop on Mint now too.
It’s because economists haven’t got the memo yet that informs them that smartphones have been recategorized as, “durable goods”.
Good. If the economy is designed to only survive with constant spending then fuck it
My phone is 5 years old and I’m not giving it up until it’s bricked at this point. Shit is just too expensive to upgrade anymore.
We should make devices lower quality to increase profits! More failures!
I think the economy has bigger problems than you not being a good little consumer.
Omg the poor economy, how could those selfish Americans do that
