"A relative newcomer in the everyday lives of most Americans, the cell phone is among a handful of newer gadgets that have held their own on the necessity scale from 2006 to 2009," the Pew researchers said.
Sixty percent of adults under the age of 30 say a cell phone is a necessity, compared with 38 percent of those 65 or older.
I have the hardest time trying to persuade people to cut back on their cell phone plans for themselves and for their kids. And I'm talking about people who have lost their jobs or their homes or who are deep in debt, or all three.
During a budget session I was giving at my church, I suggested that people should significantly cut back to a basic cell phone plan of maybe $50 or $60 a month. I even had the audacity to recommend people not pay to send text messages or access the Internet via their mobile device.
My suggestion did not go over well.
Recently, I visited an elementary school on their career day. I spoke to two classes, sixth-graders and fourth-graders. I knew without asking that the majority of the sixth-graders had a cell phone. I asked the younger children who ranged in age from 8 to 10 how many of them had a cell phone. The hand of nearly every child went up.
I was shocked and then not shocked.
As an experiment, I asked students in both classes to take out a sheet of paper and write a short note to their parents or guardians. I instructed them to ask: "Do I have a college fund?"
Then I dictated to the students the next sentence. They were to write: "If I don't have a college fund, please take my cell phone away."
As soon as I finished that sentence, the children in both classes hooped and hollered. A few admitted there was no way they would show the note to their parents.
See how it starts. I dare say not a single one of those fourth-graders (or sixth-graders) needed a cell phone.
Let's be honest shall we?
The vast majority of the talking and texting on cell phones is idle chatter. Most business travelers with cells phones plastered to their ears are loudly, annoyingly, blabbering about nothing important.
Clearly the recession has caused some people to hit the reset button on what they really need. And yet, we still can't give up or scale back on something that is clearly not a necessity.