The Pew Research Center released another report last week, called “Teens and Technology 2013,” in their series discussing youth and privacy. Many libraries (correctly) look to their young adult patrons to give them some indication of how their future library services should be designed. This new Pew study contains some interesting information that may help you decide how your online library services should be designed, if you want to engage young adults now and keep them engaged with the library in the future. (Hint: the online library should look good on a smartphone.)
- Pew survey shows mobile Internet use soaring among teens (redOrbit/Michael Harper) “Even though a majority of teens have access to other means of computing, one out of every four teens says they access the web on their cell phone more often than on traditional computers. Unsurprisingly, this number increased most dramatically among teens who have their own smartphones: One half of these teens say they’re more likely to connect to the web on their smart device.”
- Summary of findings (Pew Internet/Mary Madden, Amanda Lenhart, Maeve Duggan, Sandra Cortesi, Urs Gasser) “Older girls are especially likely to be cell-mostly internet users; 34% of teen girls ages 14-17 say they mostly go online using their cell phone, compared with 24% of teen boys ages 14-17. This is notable since boys and girls are equally likely to be smartphone owners. Among older teen girls who are smartphone owners, 55% say they use the internet mostly from their phone.”
- Study: One in four teens access the internet primarily through mobile (GigaOM/Eliza Kern) “Interesting, teenagers from lower income families are more likely to access the internet primarily through cell (30 percent of teens from households earning less than $30,000 per year, compared to 14 percent from households earning $50,000-$74,999 and 24 percent from households at more than $75,000.) And probably to no one’s suprise, teenagers are the age group most likely to be accessing the internet, still out pacing older users, particularly those over 65, by a wide margin.”
- Generation M: 50 percent of smartphone teens go “mostly mobile” for Internet (Marketing Land/Greg Sterling) “The implications of all this are pretty clear. Mobile looms even larger for people between the ages of 12 and 18 (as many as 22 million today) than it does for adults today. As this ‘generation M’ (for mobile) matures and ‘takes control,’ their preferred Internet devices will probably remain tablets and smartphones.”
Sharing fact:
Perhaps the teen tendency toward mobile Internet access partially results from the fact that they have their own individual smartphones. 71% reported that they have to share the Internet computer they have at home.
