Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it’s costing the economy

The idea, that keeping a device for more than two years is "short term" thinking that could doom the economy, is a pretty damning indictment on the state of your economy.

Jesus Christ, when did choosing not to throw away a perfectly good device become "device hoarding"?

Companies act like the general population simply OWES them business. We do not.

On that note, please refuse to participate in Black Friday and keep your Christmas low key and sentimental.

"Americans are producing less e-waste and getting more value out of their purchases, and this is bad for rich people!"

Anyone who writes a headline like this should be chained to a bale of ewaste and thrown into the ocean.

Continuing to use something that still works is Hoarding? The shear fucking gall. They're literally having to misuse the word "hoard" because they couldn't think of a word for "sticking with something that works" with negative enough connotations.

Oh no not the economy 😭😔

Not constantly throwing away things that are still good is "device hoarding" now? Strong "quiet quitting" vibes there.

29 months

squeezing as much life out of your device as possible

Dude, my average phone age is 7 years. I'm now on my 3rd since smartphones exist.

What do US people do with their phones? Even my dad (a farmer) has them longer and he loses them sometimes in the field or drives them over.

The economy can go fuck itself. I'd rather have a society and an ecology.

Oh no! Not the economy 😭

Me, reading this on my 86 month old phone and feeling like the left's greatest hero for dealing such a mighty blow to capitalism.

29 months is "as much as possible"? My phone is from 2016 and it works fine!

Fuck the economy.

Wait why the f are the consumers being blamed for the economy?

Who is only getting 29 months out of a smart phone? What are you doing?

device hoarding

Get the fuck out of here.

It might be bad for the economy, but it's better for the environment, for the amount of money available for rent, food, insurance, emergencies...

This whole thing reads like satire.

And not like the whole semiconductor industry is one of the most environmentally toxic ones. Better keep your phone/computer as long as possible.

Who the fuck decided to predicate the economy on a <2-year upgrade cycle for electronics?! Tim Apple is that you?

My $1000 piece of electronics lasted 2 years! YAYYYY!!!!

No you fucking dolt, it is saving the economy a ton of money to spend on other things.

Good.

The issue isn't money, it's the complete and utter lack of innovation on the devices being sold.

Quality is another issue. I was forced to buy a new phone, and ended up with a OnePlus. The software is so broken that I can no longer use my launcher I've used for a decade now. The home button glitches out when I do.

There is no need to upgrade devices every two years ago, which used to be the norm. A decade or more ago, each new generation of phone was a huge leap forward. Today, not so much. Maybe a marginally better camera or a touch more battery life, but nothing earth shattering, and the camera and battery life on my "ancient" Pixel 6 Pro are more than adequate for my needs. I'll probably upgrade in the next year or so, to a used Pixel 9, because the price of them used has plummeted since the release of the Pixel 10, and the Pixel 6 is nearing the end of its support by GrapheneOS.

If the economy depends in us buying new phones every two years, then maybe the economy wasn't as strong as we thought it was.

It's costing whose economy? Every purchase that anyone makes costs them more than it should, with that "more" going directly into the pockets of wealthy owners who provide little or no value. When people purchase less, they are primarily hurting those wealthy owners.

The fuck it is

Reduce the amount of disposable income across the board, then start moaning that people arent buying shit they dont need as much... The utter fucking state of these people.

"cost the economy" when your economy is based on consumerism then not buying as fast destroys the economy.

Ive had my phone for upwards of 4 years now, and I plan on keeping it for at least another 4 unless something tragic happens. Oops sorry I guess I can't afford food this week kids, those billionaires and investors might lose money so I have to go get a new phone

The law of diminishing returns has entered the chat.

My internet service provider, for example, offered 500 MBPS and recently came out with a plan that was $20 per month cheaper and only offered 100 MBPS and I jumped on it as fast as I possibly could because I don't need 500 MBPS ever.

I was going to make a joke about needing to buy a $1000 iphone every 6 months to save the economy, but then I went to the apple site to make sure I wasn’t being hyperbolic…

Christ on a fucking cracker! the latest iPhone can cost up to $3,800 in my local currency! Just fucking blow my brains out, the world is cooked. Bury me with my 5 year old phone, it’s still got a few years left in it I reckon.

Americans are increasingly opting for reusable cups. This is costing the plastic cup industry billions.

And how exactly is this bad?

Spending less money on stupid stuff isn't hurting the economy, for fuck's sake.

The exact same applies to smartphones.

Many workers report that aging devices stifle productivity, but like a favorite pair of shoes or an old sweater, they don’t want to give them up to learn the intricacies of a new device (which they’ll learn and then have to replace with another). Familiarity can trump productivity for many workers.

So first off I'm glad they mentioned this. However it's frustrating to see the first quote, "last month concludes that each additional year companies delay upgrading equipment results in a productivity decline of about one-third of a percent" which feels like real numbers versus the section I quoted which feel like vibes.

There is a cost in doing something and a cost in not doing something. Sometimes doing nothing is the best course of action.

(Now if getting a new device is a huge cost you should investigate where you can improve that process.)

I brought my s24 exactly because it's got 7yrs of updates. I suspect it'll need a new battery around 4yrs. If I'm lucky, that will let me hold out until Linux phones are more polished

The only useful thing for new phones would be if there was easily discoverable good new games to buy with real pretty graphics. Instead the stores are adware platforms and phone cameras have been pretty good enough for a decade. Splitting hairs these days for improvements

Good. Better for your pocketbook, better for yourself, and better for the world.

I would like to note that the difference in relative purchases of technology investments between consumer and business markets will make comparison a little less than easy.

That and certain social demographics within the information technology world present a bleed through of practices in spending habits and thus should not be included.

The section about buying new phones and the section about company investment appear to have nothing to do with one another.

The report by the Fed they cite is concerned with estimating the effect of capital reinvestment productivity gains by the firm.

Just breezing through the report it looks like the Fed is trying to explain differences in GDP between economies as a consequence of capital reinvestment. When firms buy new equipment, which could include IT equipment but also could include things like robots, backhoes, new looms, or any other piece of equipment a firm uses to produce goods or services, they should be more productive because their equipment has newer technology in it. The Fed reasons that if two major economies differ in GDP growth one of the potential explanations might be the rate of capital reinvestment firms in those economies engage in because newer equipment usually increases productivity. So more frequent investments in capital should yield faster growth in GDP. They present evidence in favor of that argument.

I don't know how reasonable their conclusion is because I am not too familiar with their measurements which are not direct measures of capital investment and don't really know enough about how GDP changes over time to know if this is a good explanation. It is clear, however, that the Fed is not arguing that consumers need to keep buying new phones every year or the economy will collapse or even be harmed. That is not even remotely what the report is about.

Oh no not the economy!

Noooooo the economy 😭😭😭

29 months is a lot shorter than I thought the average person switches phones. I’m still sticking with my IPhone X.

"device hoarding" Fuck off

I'm still using a Galaxy S9+ from 2018! And yes, I still get over a day's worth of battery life with the original battery.

NO, it's costing some companies. The economy benefits from cutting out waste. It just so happens that the stock market and "the economy" are not synonyms.

You look at the headlines of what’s new every year, realize it’s a nothingburger and say “meh maybe next year if there’s something interesting”. It’s been going for a few years for me, my last phone broke because I mishandled it, bought iPhone 13 and don’t see myself replacing for at least 2-3 years. I’ll replace the battery soon because it doesn’t hold a charge that well anymore but that’s about it really. Does everything else very good

Im on an iPhone 12 Pro Max(2020). That must make me above average. Yay!

Why does this smell like something that's a problem only because corporations have the same rights as people?

I'll get a new cell phone when I find one that has feature parity with my current one.

I’ll be using my 1TB iPhone 15 Pro for far more than 2 years. LOL

I bought my current smartphone in January 2022.

Why tf make a new phone every year or 2 years then? Samsung has already made it so that there's no reasonable benefit to doing that besides maybe battery life and camera. Everything else is commodity or gimmick at best. You can't keep doing that anymore. Coming out with stupid flip phones is not going to solve this made up problem. Just fucking stop.

Why do even 50% of people need wifi7? BT 5.3? 1TB SSD? They don’t care, they got what they want and the need limits was a long time ago. Also give everyone $800+ to go buy a new phone?

Want to convince me to buy a new phone? Battery with a weeks long charge. I’ll drop $1500 but then won’t replace it for 5-7 years.

29 months? I bought my current phone in July 2020! Previous was Feb 2014.

also because they are becoming walled gardens , converging into apple-esqe type situation.

Well, then...just make shittier phones. Problem solved. Economy saved. It's a win for everyone, except consumers.

Funny enough in uk the default contract length for most providers is now 3 years. You have to manualy choose a shorter contract length.