That "or" is doing a lot of work. I have an ancient nokia dumbphone on which I receive or make ~1 call per day. The effect on my lifestyle is not comparable to having a smartphone.
Yes and in that context it’s surprising it’s not higher. More interesting would be the conditions of those without a cell phone. And probably error bars matter here more than usual. Like is this statistically different than 100%,99.9%,etc?
> More interesting would be the conditions of those without a cell phone
The largest demographic without a cell phone is the 65+ age group. Only 61% of the people in that group have a smart phone.
My guess for the condition of those people? Elderly people living in nursing homes, possibly not mentally able to learn enough to use a smartphone, or possibly happy to just use a tablet for apps and games, and a dumb phone for calls.
Honestly, if you're so old that you only rarely leave the house, then an iPad and a landline already is almost as good as a cell phone is, since you'll always be close enough to your wireless phone in your small nursing home or house, and the iPad covers all the actual uses of smart phones just fine (tiktok, whatsapp, playing candy crush, checking email... which I think is 100% of the usage of smartphones, right?)
My 87 year old father doesn't have a cell phone as they rarely have signal coverage when he goes out to maintain his section of the nearby 1,000 km walking track.
He does have an EPIRB and paper maps though.
Sounds like you just don't meet many elderly people.
I have set up smartphones and iPads for my parents, who spread this among their retiree friends. There is a gap in technology adoption especially with those elderly people who don’t have kids or close younger family.
So there is this one couple who saw that my parents were using iPads and so they learned that one could use these even at their age.
Fast forward a few years and the husband of that couple is firmly into Q anon
The thing is many elderly people have problems using touch screens. Many need mechanical buttons. Not sure if it is a physical or psychological problem.
About 0.5% are incarcerated and thus shouldn't posess a cellphone (though they can still own one that's unreachable to them, what does this study exactly mean by "own").
A lot of the rest is probably older people who only use a landline, people in nursing homes, etc.
Smartphones don't necessarily have to have an effect on somebody's lifestyle. It's what people install and use on their smartphone which makes the difference.
It still doesn't change the lifestyle if you use it as a utility. If you use it for consuming content, then sure.
But using a phone for the odd phone call, message, map check, translation, calendar, tickets (bus/train), rides (Uber), doesn't make your lifestyle worse, only better.
Unfortunately dumbphones can't handle even some of the more basic utilities, or if they do, they use a significantly worse interface (number pad keys) which makes it all take longer.
I'd like to believe that, but a few years ago when I did have a smartphone, I constantly felt an impulse to check this or that on it. Now at least that gets postponed until I get to a computer.
What was their sample size to report that number? They mentioned it's based on a survey but don't list how many people they surveyed in the article. 97% is a high number to claim. They definitely didn't survey every single adult in the US (I know this for sure because I didn't take their survey).
Mind-bogglingly, that’s exactly what they did. Calling people to research how many of them own a particular subset type of telephone apparently passes for research now.
In my own family (considering only direct ancestors), I can think of 4 adults who don’t have any mobile phone (all are over 70). That’s over 50% of adults in our case.
"The analysis in this report is based on telephone interviews conducted Jan. 25-Feb. 8, 2021, among a national sample of 1,502 adults ages 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia (300 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 1,202 were interviewed on a cellphone, including 845 who had no landline telephone)."
TLDR completely meaningless study, it's like doing car ownership study at petrol station.
Yes and no. It will definitely inform about cell phone usage among landline users. You won’t cover population groups with neither a landline nor a cell phone though.
In the us there is thus famous example about the election exit polls that went horribly wrong because cell phones were new and so the phone survey ignored the laborers
The vast majority of error in modern polling comes from systematic bias when doing the sampling. The sample size is essentially irrelevant; they could ask a million people and their number would not be significantly more reliable.
Maybe it was an online survey, but 3% of them having internet access, being enough literate to answer the survey and not having a phone would be a big number then.
I agree with your point. Do they account for the number of Americans that don't have a phone at all somehow or should the real headline be "97% of American adults that can be called by cellphone or landline own a cellphone or smartphone"?
"The analysis in this report is based on telephone interviews conducted Jan. 25-Feb. 8, 2021, among a national sample of 1,502 adults ages 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia (300 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 1,202 were interviewed on a cellphone, including 845 who had no landline telephone)."
TLDR completely meaningless study, it's like doing car ownership study at petrol station.
"The analysis in this report is based on telephone interviews conducted Jan. 25-Feb. 8, 2021, among a national sample of 1,502 adults ages 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia (300 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 1,202 were
interviewed on a cellphone, including 845 who had no landline telephone)."
TLDR completely meaningless study, it's like doing car ownership study at petrol station.
Also:
"Note: Respondents who did not give an answer are not shown."
Also:
Own a cellphone ≠ use a cellphone.
I'm sure plenty of people who gave up on mobile phone would find one somewhere in drawer, same with gifted phones, but could be reached by landline in this survey.
You should also probably add (2021) to headline, since it's already 2023 and this was published APRIL 7, 2021.
important. my 93 year old grandma owns a cellphone, basically for emergencies.
Meanwhile I think I have... 4? cellphones in my house that belong to me, but only 2 of them are turned on and only 1 gets any real use (2 old ones + 1 work phone I only use for 2FA + 1 personal phone)
Unlike seemingly everyone else who has commented here so far, I actually took some time to read through the results. There are some interesting findings, like whites being the racial grouping least likely to own a cellphone at 97% ownership, compared to black and hispanic people at 99% and 100%, respectively. Assuming this isn't just a statistical artifact from a low sample size (the sample sizes are not stated, unfortunately), could this be at least in part due to luddite conservative Christian (and nearly exclusively white) groups like the Amish or Mennonites? In total, groups like these seem to have millions of members, but I'm not sure how many of them actually live without modern technology.
I know at least two (maybe more, but i didn't ask for cellphones) who are just old back-to-lander hippies who bought some land in WV in the 80s. They use public library for emails and spend their time playing music, farming, drinking their own beer and smoking their own weed and tobacco.
They are super pro-union, they all have sticker "protect the water/Save the Elk River", most of them go to the farmer's market and one of them (one of the young lesbian) was documenting the opioid epidemic in WV with the help of a local journalist (who was present because he played bass pretty well i think?).
They do have some MAGA friends, "Try supporting Manchin, honestly i don't blame them", and honestly it was really enlightening.
To me those look more likely to be sampling artifacts.
Amish people are about 0.1-0.2% of White US adults, Mennonies about 0.2-0.3%. Things I would expect to move the numbers are that 0.5% of White and 2.3% of Black Americans are incarcerated, and that about 0.7% of adults are in nursing homes (with no apparent difference between racial groups).
The likely confounding variable is just age: the oldest segments of the US population are the most caucasian, and these are the populations least like to use smartphones. So the correlation may be spurious.
What a stupid study. Happened to miss huge chunks of Native Americans who have neither cell phones nor land lines.
Have you also considered that white people are the only ones likely to have a landline but no cell phone? Due to the terrible design of the study, it excludes people who didn’t respond (which has many of the racial groups you incorrectly attributed as 100% having mobile phones).
I know several people, old and young, who do not currently own a computer, laptop or otherwise, and instead solely use a smartphone for any and all communication, internet, etc.
I have two nieces that are high school aged and I do not think either has a computer. They use their iPhones for 100% of their activities. As someone who started with an Apple II in my bedroom and has had multiple machines at all times ever since, trying to do anything on a phone feels insane to me, let alone trying to do everything. Yet there are whole generations now that will know nothing but. And I have made older friends who are not incredibly well off, and thus a laptop would be a luxury item, but a phone is a necessity- where I live now, a phone number and Whatsapp are required to get almost anything done. Thus, the priority on the phone.
It very much is a shift to me that makes me feel different; My nieces have only minimal typing skills because of this (although, they can text on a phone quickly, they aren't formatting multipage documents or consistently doing 90-100WPM for hours and end on their phones). They have no understanding of any modern operating systems involving windows or even multitasking. They spend so much time on their phones but I feel they are seeing considerably less of what's out there due to the nature of the device. They can spend hours on TikTok. They would never spend hours with 10 tabs of wikipedia open. Not on a phone.
I know it's weird to think of 'productiveness' when it comes to just, 'being on the internet'.. but when I see young people only ever on a phone, and I think to myself at that age, having multiple monitors, multiple computers at home, all dialed in and reading different webpages, chat windows, PDFs, having docs open at the same time- I feel like that was "speedrunning learning" compared to what they are able to do now on only a 5" phone screen.
The things you're lamenting their lack of access to/familiarity with are things that won't be relevant when they're adults. These are old fogey things that will die with the likes of us.
Desktop computing is the cursive handwriting of gen z+.
I'm fairly confident that at the pinnacles of most fields there will be desktop-looking machines in use for a while. I don't see engineers analyzing fluid dynamics simulations and designing jet turbines on a cell phone. Even if the cell phones of 2045 are as powerful as the most badass workstation of today. The UI matters.
Aside: I love the term 'old fogey'. Because I think if you recognize that term these days... you've now become the old fogey.
> Desktop computing is the cursive handwriting of gen z+.
Not really. Cursive handwriting was for efficiency of writing. Desktop/laptop computing just allows you to do completely different things. There isn’t a whiff of it going away in the professional world.
> Desktop computing is the cursive handwriting of gen z+.
Just because a generation hasn't had the time to upskill and branch out into alternative technologies yet doesn't make their consumer choices prophetic.
Desktop computers are by far the better form factor, for the same reason that a spacious study room is better than typing in a closet. The main barrier is a financial one. Being able to do your work and your communication in a larger three dimensional space than the 5 inch smart phone window is a privilege. That's the main reason gen-z don't do it yet. They're mostly a bunch of broke people, at the bottom of the career ladder, near the bottom of the social capital ladder, and thereby still expected to reply immediately to bosses, colleagues, new love interests, additionally expected to do it all on their limited budget, which they choose to direct towards what they value most right now in tech: portability.
Once they have a bit of money saved up, and less pressure on them to be 24/7 on-call, I'm pretty sure they too will start installing desktops into the corners of their private studies. Especially when the myopia and neck problems start to kick in.
It's not Desktops that are not going away, it's the keyboards which are still and for the foreseeable future the most efficient means of human-computer input. Not voice, not thought (which will be, expectedly, just a voice transmitted by other means) are not faster than key strokes. Swipes on the screen are debilitatingly slow and painful (crippling in the long run).
Cursive handwriting is not going away either for paper diaries and similar things for the same reason: efficiency of input.
54 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] threadThe largest demographic without a cell phone is the 65+ age group. Only 61% of the people in that group have a smart phone.
My guess for the condition of those people? Elderly people living in nursing homes, possibly not mentally able to learn enough to use a smartphone, or possibly happy to just use a tablet for apps and games, and a dumb phone for calls.
Honestly, if you're so old that you only rarely leave the house, then an iPad and a landline already is almost as good as a cell phone is, since you'll always be close enough to your wireless phone in your small nursing home or house, and the iPad covers all the actual uses of smart phones just fine (tiktok, whatsapp, playing candy crush, checking email... which I think is 100% of the usage of smartphones, right?)
He does have an EPIRB and paper maps though.
Sounds like you just don't meet many elderly people.
So there is this one couple who saw that my parents were using iPads and so they learned that one could use these even at their age.
Fast forward a few years and the husband of that couple is firmly into Q anon
A lot of the rest is probably older people who only use a landline, people in nursing homes, etc.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/us/03prisoners.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2020/04/19/will-cel...
But using a phone for the odd phone call, message, map check, translation, calendar, tickets (bus/train), rides (Uber), doesn't make your lifestyle worse, only better.
Unfortunately dumbphones can't handle even some of the more basic utilities, or if they do, they use a significantly worse interface (number pad keys) which makes it all take longer.
That states more about your self control than anything to do with the type of phone you have.
In my own family (considering only direct ancestors), I can think of 4 adults who don’t have any mobile phone (all are over 70). That’s over 50% of adults in our case.
"The analysis in this report is based on telephone interviews conducted Jan. 25-Feb. 8, 2021, among a national sample of 1,502 adults ages 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia (300 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 1,202 were interviewed on a cellphone, including 845 who had no landline telephone)."
TLDR completely meaningless study, it's like doing car ownership study at petrol station.
In the us there is thus famous example about the election exit polls that went horribly wrong because cell phones were new and so the phone survey ignored the laborers
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/01/13/share-of-th...
it links to this methodology document in the "How we did this" dropdown:
https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Tech-...
I agree with your point. Do they account for the number of Americans that don't have a phone at all somehow or should the real headline be "97% of American adults that can be called by cellphone or landline own a cellphone or smartphone"?
TLDR completely meaningless study, it's like doing car ownership study at petrol station.
TLDR completely meaningless study, it's like doing car ownership study at petrol station.
Also: "Note: Respondents who did not give an answer are not shown."
Also: Own a cellphone ≠ use a cellphone.
I'm sure plenty of people who gave up on mobile phone would find one somewhere in drawer, same with gifted phones, but could be reached by landline in this survey.
You should also probably add (2021) to headline, since it's already 2023 and this was published APRIL 7, 2021.
important. my 93 year old grandma owns a cellphone, basically for emergencies.
Meanwhile I think I have... 4? cellphones in my house that belong to me, but only 2 of them are turned on and only 1 gets any real use (2 old ones + 1 work phone I only use for 2FA + 1 personal phone)
FTFY
Not conservative at all.
They do have some MAGA friends, "Try supporting Manchin, honestly i don't blame them", and honestly it was really enlightening.
Amish people are about 0.1-0.2% of White US adults, Mennonies about 0.2-0.3%. Things I would expect to move the numbers are that 0.5% of White and 2.3% of Black Americans are incarcerated, and that about 0.7% of adults are in nursing homes (with no apparent difference between racial groups).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding
Have you also considered that white people are the only ones likely to have a landline but no cell phone? Due to the terrible design of the study, it excludes people who didn’t respond (which has many of the racial groups you incorrectly attributed as 100% having mobile phones).
I have two nieces that are high school aged and I do not think either has a computer. They use their iPhones for 100% of their activities. As someone who started with an Apple II in my bedroom and has had multiple machines at all times ever since, trying to do anything on a phone feels insane to me, let alone trying to do everything. Yet there are whole generations now that will know nothing but. And I have made older friends who are not incredibly well off, and thus a laptop would be a luxury item, but a phone is a necessity- where I live now, a phone number and Whatsapp are required to get almost anything done. Thus, the priority on the phone.
It very much is a shift to me that makes me feel different; My nieces have only minimal typing skills because of this (although, they can text on a phone quickly, they aren't formatting multipage documents or consistently doing 90-100WPM for hours and end on their phones). They have no understanding of any modern operating systems involving windows or even multitasking. They spend so much time on their phones but I feel they are seeing considerably less of what's out there due to the nature of the device. They can spend hours on TikTok. They would never spend hours with 10 tabs of wikipedia open. Not on a phone.
I know it's weird to think of 'productiveness' when it comes to just, 'being on the internet'.. but when I see young people only ever on a phone, and I think to myself at that age, having multiple monitors, multiple computers at home, all dialed in and reading different webpages, chat windows, PDFs, having docs open at the same time- I feel like that was "speedrunning learning" compared to what they are able to do now on only a 5" phone screen.
Desktop computing is the cursive handwriting of gen z+.
Aside: I love the term 'old fogey'. Because I think if you recognize that term these days... you've now become the old fogey.
Not really. Cursive handwriting was for efficiency of writing. Desktop/laptop computing just allows you to do completely different things. There isn’t a whiff of it going away in the professional world.
Just because a generation hasn't had the time to upskill and branch out into alternative technologies yet doesn't make their consumer choices prophetic.
Desktop computers are by far the better form factor, for the same reason that a spacious study room is better than typing in a closet. The main barrier is a financial one. Being able to do your work and your communication in a larger three dimensional space than the 5 inch smart phone window is a privilege. That's the main reason gen-z don't do it yet. They're mostly a bunch of broke people, at the bottom of the career ladder, near the bottom of the social capital ladder, and thereby still expected to reply immediately to bosses, colleagues, new love interests, additionally expected to do it all on their limited budget, which they choose to direct towards what they value most right now in tech: portability.
Once they have a bit of money saved up, and less pressure on them to be 24/7 on-call, I'm pretty sure they too will start installing desktops into the corners of their private studies. Especially when the myopia and neck problems start to kick in.
Cursive handwriting is not going away either for paper diaries and similar things for the same reason: efficiency of input.