In a first for any age group, more than half of Americans age 25-29 live in households with cell phones but no traditional landline telephones.
A report on phone use by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also found that the younger children are, the likelier they are to live in homes that only have wireless phones. That suggests that younger parents are showing increasing comfort relying only on cell phones even as they adjust from being single to a more settled family lifestyle, according to one of the report’s authors.
Taken together, the figures released Tuesday provide the latest evidence of how young people are leading the nation’s evolution away from landline phones.
“You could say that among that age group, wireless only is the new norm,” said Stephen Blumberg, a senior scientist at CDC and an author of the survey.
The shift toward cell phones and away from landlines is having a wide impact, changing not only how people communicate but the telecommunications industry and the work of pollsters and others who collect data.
The survey showed that overall, 27 percent of U.S. households had only cell phones in the first half of this year, up 2 percentage points since the last half of 2009. That number has been growing rapidly — in the first six months of 2007, just 14 percent of households relied only on wireless service, roughly half of current levels.
Among 25- to 29-year-olds, 51 percent lived in homes with only cell phone service in the first half of 2010. That was up 2 percentage points from the previous six-month period.
For both age groups bracketing them — 18- to 24-year olds, and 30- to 34-year-olds — 4 in 10 lived in cell-only households. After age 35, the likelihood that people live in homes with only wireless service falls…