U.S. hangs up on landlines as cellphones dominate
Survey indicates young adults and renters shun the older technology.
Deborah Braswell, a university administrator in Alabama, is a member of a dwindling group — people with a landline phone at home.
According to a U.S. government study released Thursday, 50.8 percent of homes and apartments had only cellphone service in the latter half of 2016, the first time such households attained a majority in the survey. Braswell and her family are part of the 45.9 percent that still have landline phones. The remaining households have no phone service at all.
More than 39 percent of U.S. households — including Braswell’s — have both landline and cellphone service. The landline comes in handy when someone misplaces one of the seven cellphones kicking around her threestory house in a Birmingham suburb. “You walk around your house calling yourself to find it,” she says.
It’s also useful when someone breaks or loses a cellphone and has to wait for a replacement.
The patterns
Renters and younger adults are more likely to have just a cellphone, which researchers attribute to their mobility and comfort with newer technologies.
The in-person survey of 19,956 households was part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health Interview Survey, which tracks landline use in order to assure representative samples in ongoing health studies. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus