How long you keep them is only one side of the story. The other side is how often you buy stuff. You could make an argument that the average person buys more electronics because Apple started pushing it to the market.

Sounds like your solution here is that companies should stop making products all together...

> You could make an argument

You can make any argument you like.

Far-fetched though to imply that Apple is solely responsible for defining the spending patterns of billions of people.

Most pairs of cheap earbuds I own are older than the AirPods have been around.

Have my first pair still in use.