I knew that this cell phone thing had gotten out hand, but I didn’t realize just how far. When people say “everybody has a cell phone,” they’re not exaggerating by much. The most recent reports show that there are 137 million mobile phone subscribers in the United States. Current U.S. adult population is approximately 280 million. So approximately 49% of the entire population have mobile phones. That, to me, is an astonishing figure.
Mobile phones have long since stopped being a toy just for the rich or upper middle class. Just walk into your local Sprint phone store and you’ll see most income groups represented. When I was in McDonald’s the other day during lunch, many of the employees, and the high school students that made up most of the clientele had mobile phones. In a very real sense, “everybody” does have a cell phone.
What I want to know is how we got along so well without the damned things for so many years.