Pew Research Center » Information Seeking

Infographic: The Internet and Health

Pew Research Center — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:45:56 +0000

An infographic summing up key findings from the Internet and health report

Mobile Phones Assist More Holiday Shoppers In Stores

Pew Research Center — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 16:57:11 +0000

Nearly six in ten cell owners used their phone inside a physical store for assistance or guidance on a purchasing decision this holiday season.

One-in-Three Turn to Internet for Medical Self-Diagnosis

Pew Research Center — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 13:47:00 +0000

Many have now added the internet to their personal health toolbox, helping themselves and their loved ones better understand what might be ailing them.

Mobile Health Finds Its Market In Smartphone Owners

Pew Research Center — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 19:30:23 +0000

Over half of smartphone owners gather health information on their phones, compared with 6% of non-smartphone owners.

How Teens Research In the Digital Age

Pew Research Center — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 19:08:56 +0000

Teachers participating in a Pew Internet study say the impact of today's digital environment on their students' research habits and skills is mostly positive, but not without drawbacks.

Family Caregivers Turn to Internet for Information and Guidance

Pew Research Center — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Thirty percent of U.S. adults help a loved one with personal needs or household chores, managing finances, arranging for outside services, or visiting regularly to see how they are doing. Most are caring for an adult, such as a parent or spouse, but a small group cares for a child living with a disability or long-term health issue.

Eight in ten caregivers (79%) have access to the internet. Of those, 88% look online for health information, outpacing other internet users on every health topic included in our survey, from looking up certain treatments to hospital ratings to end-of-life decisions.

Caregivers are significantly more likely than other internet users to say that their last search for health information was on behalf of someone else: 67% vs. 54%. Just 29% of online caregivers say their last search was solely focused on their own health or medical situation, compared with 40% of non-caregivers who go online for health information.

Networked: The New Social Operating System

Pew Research Center — Wed, 30 May 2012 04:00:00 +0000

Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, has written a book with sociologist Barry Wellman showing how the large, loosely knit social circles of networked individuals expand opportunities for learning, problem solving, decision making and personal interaction. This new system of “networked individualism” offers some advantages in liberating people from the restrictions of tightly knit groups.

Read more about “networked individualism” and hear Lee Rainie discuss the subject in a video.

Three-Quarters of Smartphone Owners Use Location-Based Services

Pew Research Center — Fri, 11 May 2012 04:00:00 +0000

Almost three-quarters (74%) of smartphone owners get real-time location-based information on their phones as of February 2012, up from 55% in May 2011. This increase coincides with a rise in smartphone ownership overall (from 35% of adults in 2011 to 46% in 2012), which means that the overall proportion of U.S. adults who get location-based information has almost doubled over that time period-from 23% in May 2011 to 41% in February 2012.

Read the full report for more details.

Just-In-Time Information Through Mobile Connections

Pew Research Center — Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Nearly 9-in-10 smartphone owners have used their phones in the past 30 days to perform a real-time query to help them arrange meetings with friends, solve problems or find information to settle an argument.

The growing adaptation and functionality of smartphones has made them more entrenched in users’ daily lives, a new Pew Internet & American Life report shows. “Just-in-time” cell users — defined as anyone who has done one or more of the activities below using their phones in the preceding 30 days — now comprise 62% of the adult population.

The report also found small differences in cell phone and smartphone use among men compared with women; among racial groups and younger users compared to older ones.

Within the past 30 days, smartphone or cell phone owners said they used their phone to:

• Decide whether to visit a business, such as a restaurant.
• Look up a score of a sporting event.
• Get up-to-the-minute traffic or public transit information to find the fastest way to get somewhere.

Read the full report for detailed findings on the survey.

Where People Get Information About Restaurants and Other Local Businesses

Pew Research Center — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

People looking for information about local restaurants and other businesses say they rely on the internet, especially search engines, ahead of any other source.

Newspapers, both printed copies and the websites of newspaper companies, run second behind the internet as the source that people rely on for news and information about local businesses, including restaurants and bars.

Finding news on restaurants, bars and other local businesses are among the most popular of 16 local topics explored in a national survey by Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and Pew Internet & American Life Project, produced in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The survey probed how people learn about their communities in a new way, asking about specific subjects and discovered that people use a complex range of different sources.

Read the full report for a demographic breakdown of the adults who say they go online for information about local businesses, as well as information about their favorite online sources.

See also the overview for the following report: “How People Learn About Their Local Community.”