Teens Outsmarting Adults with Smartphone Usage
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iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Young people know what they’re doing when it comes to using smartphones and what they’re doing more and more is accessing the Internet with their mobile devices.
In fact, a new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that nearly one in four 12-to-17-year-olds use their phones to go online more often than desktops, compared to 15 percent of adults.
Crunching the numbers, Pew says that 37 percent of all teens owned smartphones in 2012, a 14 percent jump from the year before. Overall, about eight in ten adolescents own cell phones, close to half of them with smartphones.
Pew researcher Mary Madden adds, “Teenagers’ use of technology is often an indicator of future trends in adult usage patterns,” meaning they’re ahead of the curve compared to older people.
And that also means adults with children won’t be able to track their kids’ Internet habits as easily when adolescents eschew desktops for mobile devices.
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