If you are holding onto your aging printer or cracked smartphone longer than you had planned, you are not alone.
Heather Mitchell, 69, retired and living in Tucson, Arizona, is content with her phone even though it is old by smartphone standards.
“My Samsung Galaxy A71 is six-years-old. It’s hanging in there surprisingly well for a jalopy. I’ve had issues with it, and still do, but they are minor,” said Mitchell. “I love Samsung phones, but can not afford a new one right now. A new phone would be a luxury.”
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.
Experts agree lost productivity and inefficiency are the unintended consequences of people and businesses clinging to aging technology.
“Think about how much internet speeds have changed in the past decade or more. In the 2010s, 100MB speeds were considered high speed and very good. A short 10 years later and we’re operating at 1GB speeds, which is roughly 10 times faster,” said Cassandra Cummings, CEO of New Jersey-based electronics design company Thomas Instrumentation. Operating at higher GB speeds requires different electronic hardware, and a lot of the older technology can’t handle it.
“Those devices were engineered when no one could fathom speeds that much faster would be mainstream,” Cummings said.
That can be a drain on nationwide networks as well.
“Both the cellular and internet infrastructure has to operate to be backwards compatible in order to support the older, slower devices. Networks often have to throttle back their speeds in order to accommodate the slowest device,” Cummings said. “Often entire sections of networks or company internal networks are running slower than they would if all devices were up to the newer standards,” she added.
Cummings doesn’t deny that staying up to date with new devices and hardware is expensive.
“Many companies, especially small businesses, and individual people can’t afford to constantly upgrade to the latest and greatest devices,” she said.
To ease the transition to new technologies, she says there should be designs that are repairable or modular rather than the constant purge and replace cycles. “So perhaps future devices can have a partial upgrade in say ethernet communications rather than forcing someone to purchase an entirely new computer or device,” Cummings said. “I’m not a fan of the throw-away culture we have these days. It may help the economy to spend more and force upgrades, but does it really help people who are already struggling to pay bills?” she said.
Indeed, entrepreneurs in the device resale market see the longer-lived tech as a success story that can be improved upon. Steven Athwal, CEO of the UK-based The Big Phone Store — which specializes in refurbished phones — says devices longevity is not the problem. “The issue is the lag. Businesses and individuals are trying to squeeze modern workloads out of old hardware, heavy processing, rendering, generation, and admin, and that creates a productivity drag. Things like slow processors, outdated software, and degraded batteries on older tech waste energy and morale,” Athwal said.
He adds that when people hold onto their phones or laptops for five or six years, the repair and refurbishment market becomes an active part of the economy. But right now, in both European, American, and global markets, too much of that happens in the shadows.
“It’s unregulated, underreported, and underutilized. If governments and big tech supported refurbishment properly, aging devices could become part of a sustainable circular economy,” Athwal said, improving the second-hand cycle by extending software support, improving access to parts, and treating repair as infrastructure.
“That’s how you disable constant replacement. No need to constantly push upgrades, which financially strains both small and large businesses alike,” Athwal said.
Still, some device manufacturers have found ways to entice consumers to ditch their older phones for newer ones. For instance, Apple just had one of its most successful new launches with the iPhone 17, and artificial intelligence could be a game-changer.
Najiba Benabess, dean of the business school at Neumann University, says rising prices and sustainability concerns are among reasons “America’s gadgets are aging out,” but the market should be focused on slowing productivity, increasing repair and maintenance expenses, and limited access to software updates and efficiency gains.
“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.
Most people still want the newest and most up-to-date phones and tablets, according to Jason Kornweiss, senior vice president of advisory services at Diversified, a global technology solutions provider, but research does show a widening gap between businesses and individuals when it comes to aging devices.
“Corporations with hundreds or thousands of people are not investing at the same rate,” Kornweiss said, adding that technology is changing so fast IT departments can’t keep up with the pace and that bloated corporations need to vet the newest technology, which takes time, and by the time they do the vetting, something new has arrived anyway. The result: businesses with increasingly long-in-the-tooth technology.
“Businesses establish shelf-life that is multi-year. Employees look at replacing devices within an organization as too tedious and people cringe when the IT department comes with a new device,” Kornweiss said, even when it is a meaningful upgrade, he added.
The price to the organization is then paid in lack of productivity, inability to multitask and innovate, and needless, additional hours of work that stack up. Workplace research conducted by Diversified last year found that 24% of employees work late or overtime due to aging technology issues, while 88% of employees report that inadequate workplace technology stifles innovation. Kornweiss says he doesn’t expect there’s been any improvement in those numbers over the past year.
There’s a disconnect between the numbers and behavior. 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. But the result of that IT clinginess is felt in the bottom line.
“Productivity is hampered and it all has a tangible impact on the economics,” Kornweiss said.
The biggest commodity a worker has is time, he says, and older devices gobble that up. Bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies can be a savior for businesses slow to upgrade, with individuals using their own more functional devices easily able to integrate into most workplace systems these days, Kornweiss said. Another option for companies that don’t want to buy a bunch of quickly dated devices is to lease.
Kornweiss sees a future where technology continues to advance at warp speed and companies will continue to have trouble keeping up. And individuals like Heather Mitchell will continue to hang on to their devices.
“I tend to hang onto my phone until I have no choice in the matter. In 26 years, this is only my fifth phone,” Mitchell said.