Remember the days when the only "app" you could get for your home telephone was "Call Somebody?" Well, these days the number of American households served only by cell phones continues to grow, according to new report from the Centers for Disease Control, which also delves into the health and behavior of cell-phone only users.
Lured perhaps by the convenience of being able to play "Angry Birds" while calling in sick, families in 3 of every 10 American homes (31.6%) no longer had a landline telephone and were served only by wireless cellular phones during the first half of 2011, according to the Wireless Substitution Report from the CDC. The number of cellular-only households increased 1.9% during the last half of 2010 alone.
In addition, one of every six homes (16.4%) that still did have landline phones reported that they received and made all or almost all of their calls on wireless phones.
Approximately 30.2% of all U.S. adults (approximately 69 million adults) lived in households with only wireless telephones; 36.4% of all children (approximately 27 million children) lived in households with only wireless telephones.
And Then it Just Gets Weird: Apparently feeling the need to work health in there somewhere, the CDC's Wireless Substitution Report also features statistics relating various maladies and misbehaviors to Americans' telephonic tendencies.
For example, according to the CDC, adults living in cell phone-only homes are "substantially" more likely to have five or more alcoholic drinks a day than those in landline homes. But, that's okay, because cell phone-only adults also manage to sober up long enough to work out more than the landline folks and, oh by the way, are less likely to have ever been diagnosed with diabetes.
On the other hand, cell phone-only people are more likely to smoke and not get their flu shots than landline users.
So should you assume from these vital taxpayer funded government statistics that people who use cell phones exclusively are a bunch boozers with chills and fever who hang out at the gym all day smoking cigarettes, or that using cell phones prevents diabetes? Probably not.
Also See:
Truth About Cell Phones and the Do Not Call Registry
Americans Getting Taller, Bigger, Fatter, Says CDC
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