From smartphones to smartwatches: what Americans actually own

The tech gadgets most Americans own, according to Pew Research Center, say as much about daily routines as they do about the technology industry. The smartphone has moved from a luxury purchase to something close to universal. The desktop computer, written off repeatedly, still sits in millions of homes. Smart speakers arrived fast, then settled. What people report owning gives a clearer picture of American life than any product launch does.

What makes Pew's work useful is repetition. The organization asks U.S. adults similar questions year after year, which turns isolated figures into trend lines. A device that shows up in most households one year and holds there the next has become ordinary household equipment. A category that climbs quickly and then flattens tells a different story — about novelty fading, price resistance, or a market reaching everyone it was ever going to reach.

This list covers the seven device categories Pew has tracked most consistently: smartphones, desktop and laptop computers, tablets, smart speakers, smart TVs and streaming devices, gaming consoles, and wearables such as smartwatches and fitness trackers. Each has a different adoption curve and a different job inside the house. For some, non-ownership is now the more unusual finding. Others split roughly down the middle, along the lines of age, household income, and education that Pew's surveys flag again and again.

Those gaps matter beyond the hardware itself. Pew's research on home broadband and on smartphone-dependent internet users shows that device ownership is unevenly distributed. The consequences fall hardest on lower-income households and older adults. A phone used as a substitute for a computer handles some tasks poorly, including job applications, school assignments, and certain government forms.

None of this predicts what comes next. It describes where U.S. households stand now, based on what people report in surveys rather than on shipment estimates or marketing claims. Taken together, the seven categories below map how most American homes actually use technology day to day.

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The smartphone is the most commonly owned device Pew Research Center tracks, held by the large majority of U.S. adults across nearly every demographic group. No other category in Pew's technology surveys comes close to that level of saturation.

Ownership climbed steadily after the first iPhone and early Android handsets reached the market in the late 2000s. What began as a product for early adopters and younger, higher-income buyers spread outward through Pew's survey years to older adults, lower-income households, and people without college degrees. The curve was steep for roughly a decade, then flattened near the top — the shape of a market that has already reached most of the people it can reach.

Gaps persist, though they are narrower than they once were. Pew's surveys consistently show lower smartphone ownership among adults 65 and older, and among those in lower-income households. Rural Americans report somewhat lower ownership than urban and suburban residents, a pattern tied to differences in cellular coverage and broadband availability rather than to interest in the devices themselves.

Pew also measures what the phone replaces. For years it has tracked smartphone-dependent internet users — people who own a smartphone but have no home broadband subscription. For that group, the phone is not an addition to a household computer. It is the only connection to the internet. The pattern appears most often among lower-income adults and younger adults, and it carries practical costs. Filling out a job application, completing coursework, or uploading documents to a government portal is harder on a handset than on a full keyboard and screen.

The smartphone's reach also shapes how other gadgets get adopted. Streaming subscriptions, mobile banking, navigation, smart speakers, smart TVs, and wearables all lean on the phone for setup, account management, or daily control. That makes it both the most widely owned device in American households and the piece of hardware most of the others are built to attach to.

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A solid majority of U.S. adults still own a desktop or laptop computer, according to Pew Research Center's technology surveys. Computer ownership did not collapse when phones took over everyday internet use. It stopped climbing instead, holding at a durable plateau while smartphone adoption moved past it.

Pew's data ties computer ownership closely to income and education. Adults with a bachelor's degree or more report ownership above the national figure, as do adults in higher-income households. Lower-income adults are considerably less likely to have one at home. Education and income track each other closely, so the two gaps often describe the same households. The divide carries practical consequences. Job applications, resume uploads, school coursework, tax filing, and many government forms go faster on a full keyboard and a large screen than on a handset.

The split between formats follows age, though it is narrower than the age gaps in other device categories. Laptops are somewhat more common among younger adults, who move them between campus, office, and home. Desktops lean older. They tend to stay put in households that bought one machine and kept it rather than trading it for something portable.

Home broadband is the variable that matters most here. Pew's research shows computer ownership and broadband subscription rising and falling together. Households without a wired connection are much less likely to own a computer. Households without a computer have less reason to pay for broadband. The two shortfalls feed each other, which is part of why the digital divide appears as a cluster of disadvantages rather than one missing product.

Remote and hybrid work after 2020 gave many households a fresh reason to buy or hold onto a laptop, independent of the phone already in a pocket. The division of labor between devices has stayed steady since. The computer handles sustained, detail-heavy work. The phone handles quick tasks in transit. Pew's tracking shows no sign of that arrangement unwinding.

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Roughly half of U.S. adults own a tablet computer, a share that has held fairly flat in Pew Research Center's tracking rather than climbing toward the near-universal levels of other categories. The device caught on quickly, then hit a ceiling.

Apple $AAPL released the first iPad in April 2010, and ownership climbed sharply over the next few years as Android manufacturers and Amazon $AMZN pushed into the category. The early run did not hold. Tablets settled into a middle tier of American device ownership — common enough to be unremarkable, but never standard equipment the way a phone is.

How people use them explains much of the plateau. Tablets handle reading, video, games, and casual browsing more often than work or primary communication. A tablet sits alongside a phone and a computer instead of replacing either, which makes it a discretionary third purchase rather than a necessary first one. Replacement cycles run longer too, since a device used mainly for streaming and books rarely feels slow enough to swap out.

Household income tracks with tablet ownership in Pew's surveys, though the gap between higher- and lower-income adults is narrower than it is for desktop and laptop computers. Entry-level models priced well below a laptop have carried the category across income brackets in a way full computers have not.

Families with children form one of the clearer pockets of ownership. Pew's research on parenting and screens has found that a large majority of parents of young children say their child uses or interacts with a tablet, and classroom reliance on tablets has reinforced the habit at home. Household composition shapes tablet ownership as much as age does.

Adults 65 and older have posted gradual gains across the years Pew has surveyed them. A larger display and a simpler touch interface make a tablet easier to read on than a phone, which has turned it into a practical entry point to the internet for some older Americans.

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About one in three U.S. adults owns a smart speaker such as an Amazon $AMZN Echo or a Google $GOOGL Nest device, according to Pew Research Center's tracking of home technology. That puts the category well above niche status and well short of the saturation that phones and televisions have reached.

The release timeline explains the shape of the adoption curve. Amazon introduced the first Echo in 2014, Google followed with Home in 2016, and Apple $AAPL entered with the HomePod in 2018. Uptake moved quickly through the second half of the 2010s as entry-level models got cheaper, then slowed as the pool of interested buyers thinned out.

Counting devices and counting owners produce different results. Households that buy one speaker often add a second or a third, placing them in a kitchen, a bedroom, or a garage. The share of adults who own at least one unit therefore understates how many of these speakers are actually sitting in American homes.

Everyday use stays mundane. People ask for music, the weather forecast, timers, kitchen conversions, and news briefings. The more consequential job is acting as a controller for other connected equipment such as lights, thermostats, locks, and plugs, which has tied speaker sales to the wider smart home market rather than to voice assistants on their own.

Ownership leans toward younger and middle-aged adults, with lower rates among adults 65 and older, though that age gap is narrower than it is in some other device categories. Income points the same direction. A smart speaker is a discretionary purchase in a way a phone is not, so it turns up more often in households with room in the budget.

Privacy remains unsettled alongside all of this. Pew Research Center's work on Americans and data collection has documented broad discomfort with devices that record and transmit what happens in a home, including among people who own them. That unease has not reversed adoption, and survey data does not establish how much of the slowdown it accounts for.

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Most U.S. households now watch television through a smart TV with built-in apps or a separate streaming device such as Roku $ROKU, Amazon $AMZN Fire TV Stick, Apple $AAPL TV, or Google $GOOGL Chromecast. Pew Research Center surveys have tracked a steady move toward streaming and away from cable and satellite subscriptions.

The barrier to entry was low from the start. Streaming required no new wiring, no installer appointment, and in many cases no separate purchase, since televisions sold in recent years arrive with Netflix $NFLX, YouTube, and similar apps already loaded. A household replacing an aging set often picks up the technology without setting out to.

Age is the clearest dividing line. Pew's work on news and media habits has found younger adults far more likely to name streaming services as their main way of watching, while adults over 65 are more likely to keep a pay-TV package. The difference is one of degree rather than kind. Streaming has gained ground in every age group Pew tracks, including the oldest.

Household income separates viewers less here than it does for computers or wearables. Streaming hardware costs about what a few months of cable does, and the cheapest route for many families is the app menu already sitting inside the television. That has kept home viewing technology more widely reachable than earlier waves of entertainment equipment.

Public understanding of what these sets do in the background has not kept up. Many smart TVs identify what appears on screen and pass that information to advertisers, a function built into the operating systems that run them. Pew's research on data privacy has repeatedly found that most U.S. adults believe they have little control over the information companies gather about them, and that they do not feel they understand how it is used. That discomfort has not slowed the spread of streaming hardware, but it runs alongside it.

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A sizable minority of U.S. adults own a dedicated gaming console such as a PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo Switch. Pew Research Center's surveys show the share holding roughly steady rather than climbing the way smartphone ownership did, which makes consoles one of the more settled categories Pew tracks.

Age splits console ownership more sharply than it splits most other devices. Ownership concentrates among adults under 30 and falls off in each older group, a steeper decline than Pew records for tablets or computers. The pattern tracks when people formed the habit rather than any barrier to buying in.

Men have reported higher console ownership than women in Pew's surveys, though the gap has narrowed as the audience for games widened. Nintendo's Switch extended the category's reach by selling itself as a family and party machine rather than a performance box built for committed players.

Households with children own consoles at higher rates than households without them. The hardware usually works as shared equipment in those homes, so one purchase serves several people. That helps explain why ownership has not eroded even as phone gaming grew into a competing option. The phone absorbed casual play without pushing the living-room setup out of the house.

Income correlates with console ownership, though less strongly than it does with wearables or computers. A console is discretionary spending, but the cost structure works in its favor. Buyers pay for one piece of hardware, then add games over several years, instead of committing to a monthly bill.

Hardware cycles give the category its distinctive shape. The PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X $TWTR both launched in November 2020, and releases like those pull in buyers in waves rather than a steady stream. Semiconductor shortages stretched that wave well past its first year, with both machines hard to find at retail into 2022. Ownership moves in steps rather than along a smooth upward line.

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Smartwatches and fitness trackers sit at the bottom of the device categories Pew Research Center tracks, owned by roughly one in five U.S. adults. More than a decade after Fitbit popularized the clip-on step counter, and since the Apple $AAPL Watch launched in 2015, the wrist has not become standard equipment the way the pocket has.

Income divides owners from non-owners more sharply here than in most other device categories. Adults in higher-income households report wearable ownership at noticeably higher rates. Pricing explains much of that gap: an Apple Watch or a Garmin multisport watch runs into the hundreds of dollars, and even entry-level bands are easier to treat as optional than a phone or a laptop.

Health monitoring drives most reported use. Step counts, heart rate, and sleep tracking are the functions owners mention most, and the category expanded alongside wider public interest in self-measured health during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Apple's electrocardiogram app and irregular rhythm notifications received Food and Drug Administration clearance in 2018, pushing the product into territory regulators oversee.

Gender is not the dividing line here. Men and women report wearable ownership at broadly similar rates. Age separates the groups more clearly. Ownership drops among adults 65 and older, a cohort that has gradually taken up other devices but has moved slower on wearables, despite fall detection and heart monitoring features marketed directly at them.

What the smartwatch has become matters as much as who wears it. Notifications, contactless payments, transit cards, and voice assistants all route through the device, which makes it less a standalone gadget than an extension of the phone already in the owner's pocket. Cellular models can work on their own, but most buyers pair a watch with a handset from the same manufacturer. That keeps wearable ownership tethered to the smartphone ecosystem rather than competing with it.