Age gap narrows with mobile app use

Jul 14, 2010 by Dirk Singer

Perhaps no big surprise – the Pew Internet & American Life Project says that young adults (the under 30s) use mobile data apps the most by a fairly large margin.

However, the same Pew study (via Marketing Charts) shows that this gap is narrowing. It seems that all age groups now like taking photos with their cameras – 93% of 18 to 29 year olds but also 67% of 50-64 year olds.

Pew’s research also shows that the biggest growth rate when it comes to the use of mobile data applications on smart phones comes from the 30-49 year old audience – the audience that’s actually most likely to be issued a smartphone for work, or to have the money to buy that iPhone4 outright.

One in five (20%) 30-49 year olds will watch a video on their phones compared to 40% of the under 30s.

Mobile video use is in fact a significant figure to look out for.

Last year a study by Transpera found that significant use of mobile video is usually a sign that someone is ‘graduating’ from using their laptop or PC to their mobile phone as their primary Internet device.

Gays and Lesbians are social media leaders
Another study that caught my eye from Marketing Charts today, was the fact that Gays and Lesbians are significantly more likely to be social media participants than the general population – at least in the US where Harris conducted the study to find out.

While 25% of heterosexual Americans read news blogs, among gay and lesbian adults that figure jumps to 36%.

Meanwhile, 29% of gay and lesbians read an entertainment blog every day, compared to 16% of heterosexuals. When it comes to readership of blogs overall, 54% of gays and lesbians read them, the figure for adults overall is 40%.

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• Survey: Gays More Frequent Social Networkers (foxnews.com)
• Study: Gay And Lesbian Adults Are More Avid Blog Readers, Social Network Users (techcrunch.com)
• Gay people ‘more likely to join Facebook and Twitter’ (telegraph.co.uk)