"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.
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.
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).
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.
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).
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?
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.
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+.
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).
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 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.
"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.
[+] [-] petodo|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] red-iron-pine|3 years ago|reply
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)
[+] [-] Aqwis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psacawa|3 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding
[+] [-] wongarsu|3 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] orwin|3 years ago|reply
Not conservative at all.
[+] [-] kortilla|3 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] throw_pm23|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ianai|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sw104|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pxmpxm|3 years ago|reply
That states more about your self control than anything to do with the type of phone you have.
[+] [-] mk_stjames|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] chadlavi|3 years ago|reply
Desktop computing is the cursive handwriting of gen z+.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ldx1024|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] em500|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickjj|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shpx|3 years ago|reply
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"?
[+] [-] sebzim4500|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajsnigrutin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petodo|3 years ago|reply
TLDR completely meaningless study, it's like doing car ownership study at petrol station.
[+] [-] xwdv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Am4TIfIsER0ppos|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jb1991|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hathym|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petodo|3 years ago|reply
FTFY
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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