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

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/23/how-device-hoarding-by-americans-is-costing-economy.html

by randycupertino • 8 months ago

11 36 8 months ago

cnbc.com

linuxhiker• 8 months ago

Good.

This constant consumerism is destroying our world.

journal• 8 months ago

Now we have to stop people from consuming cold turkey.

rkomorn• 8 months ago

You want people to quit cold turkey cold turkey?

OneMorePerson• 8 months ago

Aren't we all consuming just by being alive? It becomes consumerism when it's taken too far but I don't think any human being can ever stop consuming.

randycupertino• 8 months ago

The article title actually calls this "device hoarding" which I find somewhat absurd. Using your devices until they die isn't "hoarding" it's being environmentally conscientious and financially prudent.

tybstar• 8 months ago

Oh no, not the economy.

pjmlp2• 8 months ago

Welcome to the rest of the world where stuff usually only gets replaced when it breaks, becomes unusable or gets stolen.

nathanaldensr2• 8 months ago

My wife is Filipina. In the Philippines, there are specialists all over the place that keep things running long after they have any right to. That could be ancient computer parts, motorcycle engines, tires... If you can imagine it, they can repair it. Good luck finding that ethic here in the West! We're incredibly wasteful.

pjmlp2• 8 months ago

I miss the 1980's repair shops in Portugal, although they seem to be having a comeback.

In Germany, repair cafés are quite common.

superkuh• 8 months ago

Newer hasn't been better for quite a while when it comes to computing devices.

Group_B• 8 months ago

This is simply a rage bait article. They know what they’re doing publishing this. We don’t need stuff like this on HN.

subarctic• 8 months ago

"Figure out an opinion that no one has that you could conceivably argue for that will piss off the most people"

I know some people that like to do this for their own entertainment in real life, i guess they could get a job writing for cnbc

antisthenes• 8 months ago

Agreed. Low-effort nothingburger article, nothing to see, move along.

graeme2• 8 months ago

The headline + intro is written to infuriate. If you respond to that and not the article you're taking the bait.

The main topic the article is talking about is a drag on business efficiency from a slower upgrade cycle and running workloads less efficiently on old equipment.

Small businesses, in particular, lose valuable hours each year due to lagging systems, creating what economists call a ‘productivity drag,’” Benabess said. On a national scale, this translates to billions of dollars in lost output and reduced innovation. “While keeping devices longer may seem financially or environmentally responsible, the hidden cost is a quieter erosion of economic dynamism and competitiveness,” she added.

Of course it's on CNBC for writing the article this was. It likely never would have made it here without that spin however. State of the media environment.

nathanaldensr2• 8 months ago

The problem is, it's never not been this way. That's why it's called an "upgrade treadmill." The treadmill never stops accelerating no matter how many times we redouble our efforts to catch up. New devices with higher processing power are inevitably filled with bloated apps that consume all that productivity. Without some kind of regulating force preventing app developers from being inefficient, this will never stop.

donkeybeer• 8 months ago

Yes but why is ten year old system lagging? That's the problem.

graeme2• 8 months ago

Not the whole story. As an example I just got a new scanner. It's almost twice as fast as the ten year old scanner it replaced.

Or I got a computer with a larger hard drive. Less mental overhead in managing files.

I loaded my macbook pro from 2015 recently and it runs great (though past security updates). But the fans spin, as they did in 2015 as well. Newer Apple Silicon blow it out of the water, including on say video editing or other areas where bloat isn't the issue.

There's a lot of genuine technical improvements in ten years that aren't just keeping up with bloat. These are prosumer use cases above but the same sort of thing applies to corporate systems.

Wistar• 8 months ago

My empirical observations conclude this is true in my little circle of the world. In our offices, we are using 2017–2019 era computers that are kept up and many of my friends, family and acquaintances are using iPhone 14 and older. I use an iPhone 12 mini because I love the mini form factor and treat the phone with care as I want it to last—hopefully until the next mini comes out which is likely forever, darn it.

prngl2• 8 months ago

I always find it odd when media (and others) consider consumerism as somehow "helping" the economy. The economy is entirely about the collective activity of humans serving humans. Everything we make or do is really about prioritizing that activity over others. Why would it be advantageous to prioritize barely-distinguishable "new" devices over the myriad other things human labor and capital could be put to?

toomuchtodo2• 8 months ago

Their audience is the capital class (the wealthiest 10% of Americans own 93% of stocks). Longer device ownership and service life is fiscally responsible but suboptimal for shareholders.

prngl2• 8 months ago

Yes, I think you're right. Seems to reveal a fundamentally extractive, rather than value-generative, economic model.

axus• 8 months ago

If the new devices didn't require subscriptions, ads, or cloud verification of manufacturer authenticity, we'd be more excited to buy them.

z_• 8 months ago

Please consume. For the economy.

toomuchtodo2• 8 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live

https://theofficialjohncarpenter.com/they-live/

crtasm• 8 months ago

I went to the store but it was all out of bubblegum.

ch_123• 8 months ago

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.

As someone who makes enough money to buy a new phone every year if I wanted, I typically upgrade my phone (iPhone for what it's worth) every 4 years. My experience is that this is about as long as it takes for enough new features to accumulate to make me excited about an upgrade. By the end of this 4 year period, my phones are in a sufficiently good state to be sold, or passed on to a family member.

The idea that a typical person is expected to upgrade their phone every 2 years or so is almost incomprehensible to me.

GuestFAUniverse• 8 months ago

Indeed. That mode of the economy is totally flawed.

figassis2• 8 months ago

And it is new. Before iPhones, no one cared how long you held a phone for. Now it's an economic crisis.

idiotsecant• 8 months ago

This article is wild - there are multiple references to how awesome the iphone 17 is and how it's convincing consumers to buy it, and some weird language that implies consumers are essentially immoral for keeping old devices. I'd almost say it's product placement for the new iphone revision, but I think it's just terrible writing plus ragebait.

jmclnx• 8 months ago

Cell Phone, upgrading is a waste, I only will get a new Cell if my current one stops working of I am forced to due to it will be disabled due to a Cell Network change. My next one will probably be a burner or hopefully the new FSF phone I heard about.

Laptops, PCs ? I am on 10 year old Laptop and that works just as good as any modern system. I do not use any Microsoft products so there is no need to upgrade. Plus, any new system will probably not work with my preferred OS for a couple of years, that means if I buy, I always buy used.

Simulacra• 8 months ago

I used an iPhone 9 until Apple pushed so many apps to discontinue support, when the phone itself was perfectly fine. This whole article is insulting, and it has the undercurrent of apple's goal to make digital devices disposable.

mcphage• 8 months ago

What does it mean to "cost the economy"? Is the economy owed some particular amount of money?

lousken• 8 months ago

I used my last phone for 7 years and now I want at least 10, why upgrade?

JohnFen• 8 months ago

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.

Damn. I don't think I've ever had a phone for less than 5 years before I was forced to replace it.

figassis2• 8 months ago

I can't imagine how they were not paid to publish this.

M95D• 8 months ago

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

Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it's costing the (Apple) investors

I fixed it.

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

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