• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, May 5, 2017

Of course, it was only a matter of time. Then it happened. At some point in late 2016, the number of U.S. households relying solely on mobile phones surpassed those with landlines.

That’s according to fresh findings from the Centers for Disease Control, which obviously needs to know how to reach folks in a pinch.

“The second 6 months of 2016 was the first time that a majority of American homes had only wireless telephones,” Stephen Blumberg and Julian Luke, the report’s authors, note.

By the end of 2016, 50.8% of households had clipped their last phone line, the CDC reports, which based its figures on a survey of nearly 20,000 U.S. homes.

Year-over-year, that represented a shift of 2.5 percentage points. In other words, despite the mobile revolution, people aren’t exactly scrambling to sever their cords.

Put another way, more than 123 million adults -- and over 44 million children -- were living in homes without a landline, at the end of 2016.  

As you might expect, younger U.S. citizens are considerably more comfortable living their lives without a landline.

Indeed, more than 70% of all adults aged 25-to-34 were living in wireless-only households, at the end of last year.

In case you’re wondering, the CDC considers a household a “household” if it includes at least one adult or child.