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.
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