I have never owned a cellphone..curious, what year did they become a necessity?

[jodymarie aimee]

I am 67 and at this age, years begin to smush together...2000 was yesterday to me...what year was it they became something every man woman and child owns? Need it for research for a piece I am writing...I have googled it, but want opinions from smart DU members...thank you so much. Jody.

[aeromanKC]

1. 1997

And I thought I was the last one to get one in 1997. However, I am not a claiming to be a smart DU member nor was it a smart cellphone at the time, but it did allow me to join the circle of mobile communicators. Now, I must confess, I do feel naked when I leave the house without it. I mean, what if I get a flat tire or get stranded going to the corner market!!??

[Miles Archer]

53. My first "non-smart phone" was one I got in the late 90s from AAA.

It had a red button on it that direct dialed AAA.

It was either cheap or free with membership...I don't recall.

No "apps," nothing you could do with it other than make calls.

But I got it for the same "what if I get a flat tire or get stranded going to the corner market" reasons as you. I had broken down a couple of times on the 101 in Silicon Valley. It's not like being stranded out in the middle of nowhere...eventually, the Highway Patrol DOES pull in behind you, but I remember sitting there for about 45 minutes before that happened.

[donkeypoofed]

2. When they became "smart phones" and we could surf the 'net

Once it became more than a mere phone was when they really took off. Our lives are on our phones now because of this. Cell phones were super convenient before - now they're practically a necessity of life!

[pnwmom]

3. My niece insisted on not bringing one when she went to college in 2001. It wasn't a necessity.

Then 9/11 happened and her mom made her get one.

[CottonBear]

4. Not everyone has a 9-5 desk job, but everyone must be connected...

to their work, their school , their children and their children’s school and daycare, be able to check and send messages and emails and make financial transactions throughout the day.

It is an essential part of modern life, especially for working people and those with families who are caring for older relatives, very young children or school age children.

After the first iPhone, everything changed. You had a mobile computer in your pocket.

Posted from my iPhone! 📲 📱

[FakeNoose]

34. Yes many companies started issuing Blackberries to executives about 20 years ago

Once the bosses and salespeople got addicted to the Blackberries, it was a short step to everybody else wanting their own. This was even before "smart" phones were invented, people needed to receive their emails and get work-related messages without having to physically be at the office.

It was a need created by American businesses to keep their key people available 24/7. Now it's a whole new industry (and media form) and everyone is addicted.

[GoCubsGo]

5. Whenever it was that they became cheap enough for everyone to have one.

And, small enough. (The early models were the size of a regular phone.) Somewhere between 2000 and 2005 maybe. After that, things like landlines and pay phones started disappearing, leaving folks with no other choice. I have one. It's a cheap, no-contract, basic model. I only use it for emergencies. I got it in 2011, after resisting for years. The main reason I got it was because my car was old, and I wanted to be able to easily reach AAA if it broke down, and I realized that there were no pay phones around anymore. I keep it now, mainly because I was forced off the copper wire landline, and onto VOIP. I have no battery back-up, so the cell phone allows me communication during a power outage. Most of the time, it's off and at the bottom of my purse somewhere.

[retread]

6. When it became necessary for every aspect of our daily lives to become known to

the purveyors.

[nini]

7. It became a necessity for me around 2000 - maybe late 90s.

When my car died at night in the middle of no where.

I got a phone the next day.

I do not use mine for entertainment though. Just calls and some texts. I still prefer a call instead of texting unless it's something simple.

[vsrazdem]

8. I didn't get one until 2016, and only because my daughter got it for me.

My air conditioning went out in my car. I would have to pick my grandkids up from school and sometimes, they were not where they were supposed to be at the right time. My air conditioning was not working in my car and in Arizona the heat starts getting bad by March/April. She said I needed it to call them and find out where they were so I didn't have to sit and wait in the heat. Otherwise, I probably still would not have one.

[littlemissmartypants]

9. 1992 is when I got my first one.

I also had a Handspring Visor, Personal Data Assistant that was modular with a black and white camera attachment. I loved it. I slept with it like a teddy bear.

[EX500rider]

50. Yeah same here, 1992, have had the same # since. Was $1 in/out a min for calls. n/t

[sprinkleeninow]

54. 1993 our first phones. Were not quite as big as a 2-way radio. 😆

Next one I got shortly after was a Startac flip. Still have it. Archived along with all my other previous phones. Most later ones had to be in/are in 'color'. Go figure.

[Afromania]

10. Mid 00's when they started pulling out the pay phones.

[Ms. Toad]

33. That's my measure, too -

and same time frame. I was still able to find pay phones at gas stations in 2004, but not by 2006.

[politicaljunkie41910]

42. Same here; when it became impossible to find a public phone.

I admit that I was dragged kicking and screaming into buying a smart phone. I watched how others had become a slave to their phones and I didn't want that to happen to me. My 3 grown kids collectively told me that they were tired of playing telephone tag, and that I needed to learn how to text. They said it was too much trouble making repeated calls and voice mail had become obsolete. Texting was easier.

I must say that I cringe with I see that generations text messages, because it doesn't encourage them to learn how to spell and their grammar is likewise atrocious. I feel sorry for that next generation; my grandkids.

[Recursion]

11. The big jump in ownership was after 9/11

People who had been resistant to cell phones realized they wanted to be able to contact their families in an emergency

[krispos42]

12. Um, maybe 15, 20 years ago

Basically, it came down to being small enough to easily carry, advanced enough to use easily, and cheap enough that it was a minor monthly burden.

It was something readily available to deal with emergencies and other unforseen circumstances. First Responders began to carry them on their own dime. Middle-income business people became big users, and people on the road a lot. Probably became a status symbol as well, but it was also becoming common on TV shows.

Then they got cameras, and then they got decent cameras. So now it was a convenient way of documenting, say, my kid's activists. No film, and no extra and bulky device to carry around.

Then more features kept getting added for this simple reason:

The phone must be a certain minimum size for us to use effectively. The technology in the phone keep shrinking as the chips become smaller and smaller. Eventually, they can add more features to the same 7"x3"x.5" brick. Like, GPS. Dual cameras. A flash. A full touch-sensitive, full-color screen. External speaker. A magnetic compass. A thermometer. A full set of accelerometers. Three different methods of broadband digital radio communication. More processing power and memory.

So at some point, between the communication abilities, the information abilities, and the documentation abilities, it simply has become a widespread part of modern life.
When I worked at Radio Shack 20 years ago, I got a sprint phone for I think $129 and the special Radio Shack employee plan of 300 minutes a month for $30.

Now I have a $ 250 phone that can call, text, video call, surf the internet, take pictures and movies, link up wirelessly to my car or headphones and play music, navigate anywhere in the world, and God knows what else. And my plan has unlimited calling, texting, and data for $40 a month.

Hell, I'm writing this in my bed, on my phone, with my cat on my lap!

[sellitman]

13. I was a traveling salesman for 35 years.

I can only remember having one. I was also a early user of GPS. I had my laptop attached to a dashboard sensor that used the Satellites.

[essme]

14. I have a flip phone. I am a librarian

Smart phones are neat, but I have never met anyone that "needs" them-

Feel free to message me.

[crazycatlady]

18. Everyone who works for me needs a smartphone

I am a canvass director (for Dem campaigns). We use an app called 'MiniVan' that the lists are loaded in. For paid canvasses, it is important that they use the app and not paper as it is an extra level of QC.

They don't necessarily need a smartphone, but they need a device they can download the (free) app on. It could be a tablet or iPod Touch, but so far they've all used smartphones.

[lindysalsagal]

15. The year my daughter demanded I get one so she could call me....

[aikoaiko]

16. Early 2000s. I think 9/11 and Smartphones really changed the "need" factor

Plus the plans got a lot cheaper right around then.

[aikoaiko]

40. Maybe earlier (the 90s) if you lived in SF, NYC, or DC.

[crazycatlady]

17. I got my first in 2000

I have never had a landline in my own name.

Payphones are now few and far between. My Gen Z cousins do not know what a payphone is. Even if they still existed, not too many people pick up strange numbers these days.

I'm also not a boomer if that matters.

[Polly Hennessey]

19. All of the above.

[Books_Tea_Alone]

20. I go by my pregnancies...

In 1996 for my first, the hospital rented beepers to the dads so they could be reached in an emergency or if the time came. By the time of my second in 2002 everyone had a cellphone and beepers became a thing of the past.

[treestar]

21. Whenever the payphone stopped

There are none now. So if you are out, there is no way to call as there was before the cell phone.

[Quemado]

22. 2000 - having a cell phone saved me from being prosecuted.

I bought my first cell phone in 1999.

The following year, I was in a situation in which I was arrested, but had the charges dropped because I had a cell phone at the time that proved that I didn't do what the arresting officer said I did.

To me, a cell phone is a necessity. Thank God the situation didn't happen to me before I had a cell phone.

[customerserviceguy]

23. When everybody else had one

Seriously, when I started feeling like I was left out, I got one in the mid-2000 decade.

However, my 85 year old mother has one "for emergencies only", it is so old that I had to go on eBay to find a replacement battery for it when the original battery died. She has a landline, but that's through her cable company. We ditched ours years ago.

Also, all a landline is anymore is telemarketer bait. 90% of the people you'd want to talk to will prefer to dial your cell phone number, because they know there's a better chance that you will either answer it, or at least listen to a message on it sooner. Yes, scammers and spammers target cell phones, too, but my "default" ring is one second of silence. I'm not even disturbed in the slightest, because I've programmed a real ringtone for my contacts, who are the only people I care to hear from. A doctor's office confirming an appointment for the next business day will leave a message, most trash calls won't.

I did have an experience over the holidays where I left my phone at our place in NY while down in SC for Christmas and New Years, turns out, it was in a shirt pocket of a wooly shirt that I wear as a kind of light coat while keeping the thermostat down in the winter. I didn't have it when we took off for SC, and was without it for about ten days. During that time, we saw my lady's niece, who is a doctoral candidate in Alabama, and she surprised me with, "Don't you find it liberating to be without it?!" I had to say, yeah, I didn't miss it that much.

However, the total addiction people have to cell phones disturbs me. Sure, when I'm out for a beer, I'll check weather, news, and sports scores on it, but as soon as a live human comes up to talk to, I'll put it away, taking it out only to show a photo to another person as part of our real live conversation. And, I steadfastly refuse to text, I cannot possibly type as fast as I can talk, and at 63, I think I can still hear better than I can read small type.

It's a good question, thanks for bringing it up, maybe while you're gathering info for your piece, it will cause a few of us to reflect on the influence the cell phone has had on our lives. We may decide to change nothing about our use of them, but every once in awhile, it's good to reflect on our behaviors.

If that research is in writing that winds up on a website, please post a link in this thread, I'd love to read your findings!

[MineralMan]

24. I got my first one, a big brick phone, in 1992.

I can't say it was a necessity, though, since coverage was spotty, at best. I bought it for emergency use while on the road. Today, I have a flip phone in my pocket when I'm out of the house, but also have an Android smart phone that goes with me when I travel. Both are off about 95% of the time. I use a landline as my business number, since I work in a home office.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

25. For me it was about 1996, when my younger son

got sick at school twice in a couple of weeks. They couldn't reach me to tell me I needed to pick him up because I wasn't home. Fortunately we were required to have a back-up emergency contact, and that friend got him both times.

For several years I used it rarely. Even now, I'm not big on the cell phone. I don't have a smart phone, see no real need for one and keep on hearing too many stories about them and how they malfunction or won't update and you're forced into spending hundreds -- or is it thousands? -- of dollars for a new one. No, thank you.

Plus, I can hear better on the landline.

Plenty of people can function quite well without one. It simply depends on your personal situation, perhaps your job.

Oh, and I'm 70.

The real answer is that there is no one specific year when they became a necessity for everyone.

[underpants]

26. Not a necessity but it helps

Especially having a kid and for getting a new job. Trust me on the last one. I spent a year secretly looking for another job and my employer had no idea.

[stopbush]

27. Smart phones became a necessity shortly after owning a personal computer

became a necessity.

I assume you already own a computer.

[Ms. Toad]

31. I owned a personal computer in the late 80s,

my first laptop in 1997

my first dumb phone in 2004

my first smart phone (without a data plan) in 2012

my first smart phone with a data plan - still don't have one.

Shortly after = quarter of a century?

[stopbush]

37. I'd say you were an early adopter and ahead of the curve.

I started on computers in 1992 (Mac) when I got a job with a company whose business involved desktop publishing. I didn’t buy a home computer until 2005. Got my first cell phone in 2008 and my first smart phone when the iPhone 3 came out.

[Ms. Toad]

41. Ahead of the curve on computers

behind on cell phones.

I bought a Vic 20 when I was taking a programmng class for my master's degree in applied math. I was also teaching programming (in a high school) at the time - and decided Commodore 64s were a cheap enough alternative that we might be able to convince the school to buy them to move away the single live terminal + 2 dumb (paper tape punch) terminals.

Also an early laptop adopter. I was in law school at the time, and had to get special permission from each faculty member to use it in class, since I was the only one who had a laptop. That first laptop cost $1400 - and got me about as much computing power as $100 will get now.

[Polybius]

52. A Vic 20 in the late 80's was definitely behind the curve

It was released in 1980, and was obsolete by 1982. Some would argue it was obsolete even when it was released, as the Atari 800 was far superior. Commodore dropped it when they released the Commodore 64 just two years later. By 1985, they released the powerful Amiga (and the ST from Atari), and in 1986 the Apple IIGS and the first Mac came out.

Nevertheless, the Vic was a big seller. Sorry for rambling on. Classic computing is my specialty, I have over a dozen fully restored.

[Ms. Toad]

58. Thinking back on when I did my masters degree -

I would have bought it between 1979 and 1983 - likely closer to 1983. I fairly quickly replaced it with the Commodore 64. We used the Commodore 64 past 1989, when I left the school district. (It was an inner city school with not much money. We convinced them to spring for half as many Commodord 64s and TVs as there were students in the class.

But as to being ahead or behind the curve - I was speaking generally, not specific to the Commodore lines. At the time (mid-late 80s) I knew virtually no one else with a home computer - and far fewer on the internet (Cleveland Freenet, then shortly later QuantumLink - with a lifetime membership that converted to a lifetime AOL membership)

[DBoon]

28. 1993

When my employer at the time decided he needed instant communication with us when we were out in the field.

At our own expense of course. It was called "investing in your career"

[WillowTree]

66. Ah......that's not good. I'm lucky to have what amounts to the opposite set-up.

I use my personal phone for company business (email, IM, WebEx meetings when I'm away from the office without my laptop), but they pay me a monthly stipend for that use. Since I have very little personal data usage, I have a plan that only provides 2 GB of data and what the company pays me actually slightly exceeds my monthly bill. Works out right well.

[Ms. Toad]

29. We shared a single phone

among 3 of us from 2004 through 2006, when our daughter was able to drive, and we wanted to ensure she could always reach someone in an emergency.

Before 2004, none of us had a cell phone. Between 2004 and 2006 I was still generally able to find pay phones at gas stations. I don't recall finding any after we got our daughter a cell phone - which is what I would mark as the point at which cell phones were a necessity. I.e. sometime between 2004 and 2006.

[Adrahil]

30. 2002 for me.

My wife and I had a high risk pregnancy and she needed to be able to get in touch with me wherever I was. After the birth, it Had just become part of how we lived. Finally ditch our land line 4 years ago, and haven’t missed it a bit.

[MoonchildCA]

32. For me, it was 2003.

The majority of adults had them, but not all. Especially not the older generation. My parents died in 2005, and they never had one. I don’t remember their friends or my aunts and uncles, probably late 60s to mid 70s at the time having one.

I got them at the time, because I was a single working mom, and my then 13 year old daughter took the bus home from school, and would call me when she walked in the door. One time, something held her up on the way home from school, I can’t remember what it was, the bus was late or something, and I was freaking out waiting for her call. We went and got cell phones the next day. For her age, it was early. I think maybe a quarter or a third of her friends had them at that age, back then.

[UniteFightBack]

35. If you leave your home for any reason I deem it a necessity. Early 90's I would say. nt

[DFW]

36. I got my first one a little over 20 years ago.

And I'll be 67 this year, too. I probably should have gotten one earlier. I'm in a different country every day for work, and need to be reachable when I'm on the road which is always. Maybe when I retire, I'll ditch it (I don't even have a "smart" phone except when I'm in the States, which is rare), but I don't see retiring for another ten to fifteen years.

[liberal N proud]

38. About 2005 for me

My business travel picked up exponentially and our first child went off to school.
But we had cell phone so far back that is was a bag phone with an antenna sticking out the top.
Did the flip phones and no contract phones, but travel became so much easier with the smart phones.

Even had an iPhone for a while as part of a job. But when I had to pay for a phone myself, it was back to android.

[Vinca]

39. We've got one we share between us. If I make 1 call a month it's a miracle.

Sometimes I use the Internet when I'm out and about to try to evaluate an antique or collectible I'm considering buying for resale, but that's about it.

[SMC22307]

43. While out driving (especially road trips) and riding alone on the bike path...

I felt safer. Got mine during the late '90s.

[MurrayDelph]

44. I got my first one in 1993

I was traveling a lot for work and my parents were getting old and frail.

When my then-girlfriend moved in, in 1998, and I was still traveling, the first things I got her were a cell phone and put her on my AAA.

As a (retired) tech-nerd, I have an Android that I can program with Tasker. It's three-years old because, as a traveller, I still want a phone that I can swap out a dead battery (rather than have to sit in the cold 20 to get enough of a charge from a battery pack during an emergency).

My wife has a feature phone, which she uses sparingly. (She used it yesterday to call me from the Redwoods).

[kimbutgar]

45. 2003 for me

My husband’s car broke down o the freeway and he was stranded. A tow truck operator stopped and saw him. He loaned him his cellphone to call me so I could make call our mechanic. After that incident my husband instisted we get one. I had resisted for a long time but broke down and got us a pair. I went with tracfone pay go because I worked for a guy who had a cell phone and his bills were like $150 a month. I did not want to add that expense to our family’s budget. It cost us $40 every three months. To this day I strive to keep my cell phone bills low. I still have a land line that I conduct my major calls on. The cell phone is only for emergencies and receiving texts.

I brought my first computer in 1990 and was on the internet in 1996.

[nocoincidences]

46. Got one early this century, but seldom used it until 2010 or so.

Still rarely use it, unless I am traveling, or waiting in a doc's office when I will play games on it to kill the time.

[GemDigger]

47. 2015 for me and I didn't buy it myself. 65 here.

My son knows I have a way of getting into things like logging roads and going up crazy mountains by myself. He decided that he wanted me to have a smart phone in case I got lost, had a flat tire, broke my leg or attacked by a grizzly (no joke). That way he could find me by the "track my phone" option.

[smirkymonkey]

48. I got my first cell phone shortly after 9/11 living in NYC.

I got my first iPhone a little less than a decade later when I realized more people were texting rather than calling and it was too frustrating to text on a regular cell phone. I have had the same iPhone for years and one of the best things about it is that it can keep me entertained/busy whenever I have to wait (riding in taxis/Uber, doctor's offices, waiting in lines, etc.).

[luvs2sing]

49. We got ours in around 2000.

Mainly because of free long distance. My husband was traveling a lot, and his having a phone to call me daily took a huge chunk out of our ridiculous phone bill. About a year later, he insisted I get one. I was traveling to a rural area about an hour away every week for agility training with our dog, and he wanted me to have a phone in case I had car trouble. Unfortunately, the area was out of Sprint’s network and, if I had broke down, I would have to walk five miles to get a signal..and would be in a small town with plenty of resources.

As late as 2006, I worked with an insurance executive who still didn’t have one and refused to get one.

[lark]

51. 1998

When I went to work at an inner city hospital and had to drive through a bad part of town to get there and often worked until very late.

[peacefrogman]

55. I was a hold out at 2004.

[Mabel]

56. My job issued an iphone and made it mandatory to use sometime around 2010

At that point my 8hr job became a 24/7 job, one of my peers was even reprimanded for not answering a call while he was on vacation. When I retired I rebelled and bought a flip phone, used it only for emergencies and didn't give out the number, I felt a cell phone and especially a smart phone was just a ball and chain.... That lasted a year as I found I missed the stupid thing.

[PTWB]

57. Do you still use a landline? I don't know anyone with a landline in their house anymore.

[StatGirl]

60. We have one.

We like the idea that the phone will continue to work even if the power goes out. Also, unlike cell phones, there's an assumption of privacy in conversations.

[StatGirl]

59. Convenience vs necessity

I got a flip phone in 2006 for the convenience of being able to place calls and for safety reasons.

But it's only been in the last couple of years that I literally can't do some things because I don't have a smartphone. For example:

Many bank accounts and government accounts won't let you log in without sending you a text for dual security. (They will also call your landline, but my provider considers some of these calls to be spam and won't let them through. And my landline is in a different room from my computer).

I had to get a business visa to a foreign country, and their procedure required me to receive a text (which, thankfully, came through on my ancient flip phone).

My place of work has now decided we can't log into our e-mail accounts without dual authentication, which requires either having a cellphone, being near the same landline every time we want to log in, or buying a specialized hardware token. Or we can use specialized software on a smartphone, which they cheerily assumed we all have with us at all times.

A couple of years ago, I was in Atlanta taking a bus to my hotel. The bus driver wasn't announcing the names of the stops, and I had no mapping software to see if I was getting close. I finally begged a nice young student to let me know when I had reached my proper stop. (I also later got lost taking a bus to the Jimmy Carter center, since I had misread the instructions, and didn't have a map to help find my way back. A smartphone or Garmin would have been very handy.)

So I'd say, based on my experience, it was about 2016 or 2017 the default assumption became "You have a smartphone".

[ooky]

61. For me, when I realized that the landline phone I still had was essentially obsolete.

I'm guessing that would be at least around 10 years ago or more because I don't remember the exact year that was.

Obsolete because the landline no longer served a useful purpose by being in my house. I didn't need to pay for two phone services, and the cellular technology at that point had advanced to the point it was reliable enough to dump the landline with complete confidence. The cell phone was far and beyond more flexible. I always had it with me wherever I happened to be. You can't do that with a landline.

[NastyRiffraff]

62. I resisted getting a cell phone for years

I got my first one sometime in the late 90s. Everyone else seemed to have one and they thought I was weird because I didn't.

[yewberry]

63. I got my first in 2008-- it was flip phone.

I finally broke down and got a smart phone 2 years ago. Kind of behind the curve.

[Downtown Hound]

64. I didn't start really using one until 2013

I had had a few prior to that, but I always ended up not using them much and viewed them as more of a nuisance than anything. Then one day, my car broke down. I was about 10 miles away from home. No problem, I thought. I'll just find the nearest payphone and call AAA. Oh silly me, showing my age. I ended up walking 10 miles back to my house. It took hours, and me feet were killing me by the time I got home. There was not a single working pay phone at any of the two dozen or so markets and strip malls I passed along the way.

I realized then that cell phones were a requirement for modern day life. There are no alternatives left for emergencies like that. I probably could have asked one of the businesses to let me use their phone, but my thinking at the time was that there was bound to be a pay hone right up the road any minute now. I kept doing that until I was so close to home that I was like, "Screw it. I'm just going home. I'll call from there."

I've had a working cell phone ever since.

[Brother Buzz]

65. About the same time the telephone booth disappeared

I have never owned a cellphone either, but I'm happy to report this reformed Luddite finally retired my rotary telephone last year. Boy, I was pissed when the telephone company stopped supporting the analog service years ago and I couldn't make outgoing calls years ago ago, but I really enjoyed the heft of the old school receiver.

Times have been better

[Hekate]

67. Probably the year I saw one of our local derelicts talking to himself while holding an empty hand to

...his ear. It had gotten to be a thing with well-dressed people to go about their public business holding their cell phones to their ears and seemingly talking to themselves -- so why shouldn't this poor soul do likewise with the voices in his head?

Can't remember the year, but it was still the mark of the affluent and hip to have one -- so had to have been close to 20 years ago. Now my 40-ish kids don't even have land lines.