[Grammar] These days, everyone looks up things on their smartphone"s"

[Rover_KE]

kadioguy, note that your thread title should have ended ... on their smartphone(s).

You are not quoting the final s but offering it as an alternative.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

These days, everyone looks up things on their smartphones. Smart speakers make looking up things even easier. You just talk to the speaker. You can ask it to find information or do other things. You can schedule things on your calendar or control your smart home. You can also check the weather, find the spelling of a word, shop online and much more. You can do all this with just your voice.

(Quoted from Let's Talk in English)
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"Everyone" is singular, so why not write "everyone looks up things on their smartphone" (singular smartphone)? Did the writer suggest that everyone can have more than one smartphone?

I don't remember answering this one, but it looks like I did.

Anyhow, I've changed my mind.

- Everyone is singular. We'd never say "Everyone are coming to the party."

- I don't like pairing everyone and their. I know it's accepted, and I do use it sometimes. But I still don't like it.

So I'd rephrase it this way: Everyone looks up things on smartphones.

It's true that you could read that to mean that people have more than one smartphone. But that's more awkward than suggesting that everyone in the world is sharing a single phone.