"Device hoarding" is apparently 2025's version of "quiet quitting"—which is to say, a phrase that doesn't mean what it sounds like, and that is being vilified despite describing an objectively good thing.
Quiet quitting, in case you have forgotten, was the practice of employees *gasp* only doing their actual job and not working during their personal time. It wasn't quitting at all, unless quitting means "continuing to do one's job."
It was blamed for productivity shortfalls by people who believe employees are company property and owe every ounce of time and energy to their employers.
Device hoarding has a similar pedigree, referring not to the practice of collecting and holding devices one doesn't need, but rather simply holding onto a device that still works instead of replacing it as soon as possible.
Breathless headlines are blaming this so-called hoarding (again, literally not hoarding) for weakness in the economy.
What quiet quitting and device hoarding have in common—besides being lies—is the worldview of people who believe in, worry about, and report on them.
The premise of quiet quitting and device hoarding alike is that you owe everything to your corporate masters. That giving less than everything to your job is "quitting," that spending less than every dime in your bank account is sabotaging the economy.
This worldview is also represented in my journalism bête noire from the 2010s: "Millennials are killing ____" stories. The premise of every one of which was that whatever business or product or industry Millennials were accused of murdering was somehow entitled to profitably exist in perpetuity, and that young adults were breaking some sort of social contract by choosing to spend their money on something else.
@maxleibman or all too frequently, not so much choosing to spend their money on something else as having less money to spend in the first place—much like all those industries which millennials supposedly killed, people keeping their devices longer probably *is* related to weakness in the economy but its a result of it not the cause
