Landlines may be out of vogue, but these Americans still can’t cut the cord.

More than 3 in 4 American adults lived in homes without a landline at the end of 2023, according to the most recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Roughly 76% of adults and 86.8% of children lived in homes that were "wireless-only," which the CDC report defines as someone who "had a wireless telephone and lived in a household that did not have a landline.

The agency's National Health Interview Survey, an ongoing biannual report from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, has tracked the estimated percentage of Americans who have continued to hang on to their landlines for more than two decades. In that time, the robust expansion of wireless networks nationwide and rapid advances in the technology powering smartphones have driven more people to cut the cord.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the percentage of landline-only adults has dropped over the same period. Roughly 2% of adults only had a landline in the most recent survey in 2023.

Behind the cord-cutting: Who still owns a landline phone? You might be surprised at what the data shows.

Who are the cord-cutters?

Nine in 10 adults in the 30 to 34-year age range were wireless-only, with decreases in the percentage seen in progressively older age groups.

The split in wireless-only by gender was statistically even, with men (75.5%) being only slightly more likely than women (74.8%) to give up a landline.

State-level estimates collected for the survey showed a lower percentage of wireless-only households in the Northeast.

Contributing: Daniel de Visé, Paste BN

SOURCES National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention