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.

    • arin@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      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!!

  • octobob@lemmy.ml
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    13 hours ago

    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.

  • rothaine@lemmy.zip
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    16 hours ago

    Maybe “the economy” should give some more money back to working class people, ya dingdongs

  • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    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.

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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      19 hours ago

      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.

  • SpankyDoodle@eviltoast.org
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    20 hours ago

    What do they think we all want to be influencers in the newest greatest thing. Way overrated. Fuck the economy. Id rather stop contributing to the piles of ewaste.

  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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    21 hours ago

    Let’s all feed the “economy beast” with fake, valueless, money tokens and buy hardware, while we all starve. Earn points!