News flash: Americans, who are, on average, not a bunch of wealthy muckety-mucks lighting their cigars with Benjamins, are spending too much money on their stupid cell phones. We as a nation have cut back on our overall spending even as we're spending more on our precious "smart phone" bills. Smart phone? More like... unnecessarily expensive device!

The WSJ lays out the problem here: in the past five years, our average phone bill has gone up by well over $100 a year, even as our spending on food, entertainment, and clothes has fallen. We are choosing to forgo going out in order to spend more time with our phones. That's sad. And broke Americans cannot afford this:

The average household's annual spending on telephone services rose to $1,226 in 2011 from $1,110 in 2007, when Apple Inc.'s iPhone first appeared. Families with more than one smartphone are already paying much more than the average-sometimes more than $4,000 a year-easily eclipsing what they pay for cable TV and home Internet.

VIRGIN MOBILE IS $35 A MONTH WITH NO CONTRACT. YOU FOOLS. IT'S JUST A FUCKING PHONE. GO PLAY OUTSIDE.

Get your shit together, America.

[WSJ. Photo: Ed Yourdon/ Flickr]