Our new report on Teens and Tech did a deep dive into how 12-to-17 year-olds use technology. Among the findings were a substantial increase in the use of smartphones by teens and a significant number who are “cell-mostly” internet users — getting online by using their phone rather than a desktop or laptop computer.

Amanda Lenhart, senior researcher at the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life project, and Lee Rainie, director of the project, took questions on the study from our readers in a Facebook chat conducted March 14.

Amanda Lenhart: Welcome everyone! We’re very excited to discuss our new findings on teens & technology with you. Please post your questions/comments in the comments section below this post for the next hour.

Courtney Mota: Hi Amanda, do you have breakouts on what teens do on their phones, and when? Texting, games, photos, social networks, “googling stuff” etc.?

Amanda Lenhart: So the last time we really looked at what teens were doing with their phones was in 2010 in our Teens and Mobile Phones report.  So the data is a bit old and doesn’t take into account all the new functionality that smartphones offer. But back then we saw that 83% use their phone to take photos (most popular), 64% share those pics with others, 60% use phone to play music, 46% play games, 11% purchase things on the phone, 21% use email on the phone. You can find more on page 5 of the report linked above.

Kimberly Allison: Following up on Courtney’ Mota’s question, with increased mobile usage, are there topics teens or more or less likely to look up from their phones? Are views on privacy changing at all?

Amanda Lenhart: We’re releasing a new large report in the next few months that looks squarely at youth and privacy online and on phones. In fact, the survey is designed to focus on privacy, these questions are just a few we’re peeling off early so that folks can have access to the basic use data sooner.

Grace Bello: Any data about media literacy? If teens are relying more and more on the Internet for information, is there any indication that they know how to distinguish an official source from an unreliable one? Also, are there online resources or courses that teach teens media literacy?

Amanda Lenhart: This study focuses on privacy, but we hope to look more thoroughly at media literacy in the future. The Berkman Center at Harvard is doing a bunch of great work on information literacy with you – and they’re our partners on this project.

Adam Gertsacov: One of the most interesting findings I thought is that the heaviest texters are the heaviest talkers. Those that want to communicate use any (and every) means necessary.

Amanda Lenhart: Thanks, I thought that was a fascinating finding from our earlier reports on Teens, Smartphones and Texting.

@Anh Ta: Any thoughts on recent trend of teens migrating from Facebook to alternative social networks, such as Pheed? It seems teens are increasingly concerned with privacy, especially from prying parents.

Lee Rainie:  Helping out Amanda here. We’ll have a major report in about 6-8 weeks on teens and privacy issues. We don’t have data on teens coming and going on Facebook, but you can see some of the young adult trends in this recent report of ours.

Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Town and Country: We just read last week that teens are already tiring of Facebook. What do you recommend to reach them as best tool for now?

Lee Rainie: I’d bet your youth group members would give you great insight into what platforms and devices are “hot” among teens in your area. There is never a “one size fits all” answer, so you’ll likely find it useful to test out several platforms/services and then watch your data!

Amanda Lenhart: Re: Lee’s comments to the Episcopal Church – we haven’t seen much about teens dropping off of Facebook, though they may be using it less. You can still reach them there, but it pays to diversify and exactly as Lee, says, ASK your youth about where they are and go there. It maybe that your group is on Twitter, or Tumblr. And it depends on what you want to share – a Tumblr is great for sharing image oriented content, Twitter is best for shorter burst of information, with the opportunity to go deeper through links.

Jeff Sonderman: Is there any data about whether teens are more comfortable than older people with the idea of using small screens for extensive time and activity?

Amanda Lenhart: We don’t have data on that specifically. I do know from some focus group work that some older adults have difficulty with mobile phones generally because of visual impairments, but that’s about as much as we have on your question.

Digital Family Summit: Expanding on Jeff Sonderman’s question, is there a correlation between physical ailments and heavy texting? Is there someone studying that? Obviously, we might not have good data for a number of years. There is anecdotal data, of course…

Amanda Lenhart:  Those are great questions – I know there are folks looking at obesity and heavy use of technology (gaming, and television watching, I believe). I know that Sandra Calvert at the Children’s Digital Media Center at Georgetown University is looking at how to use games to help obese children and teens lose weight. And I bet she and her colleagues know others who are looking into the questions that interest you.

Sarah E. Montague: My own “personal” family research with nieces and nephews indicates that Tumblr is growing as communication hub. Wonder if you see that too.

Amanda Lenhart: We didn’t have room on our current survey to ask about Tumblr specifically, though it is definitely starting to come up in our open-ended questions. We can see that Tumblr is important to young adults in some adult work we did on the topic recently, which our moderator will post shortly.

(If you scroll down the page here, you can see the demographic breakdown of Tumblr users.)

Charles Strickland: 23% of the kids use a tablet or laptop. That to me means the kids are not reading or reading a printed publication. Am I correct in this assumption?

Amanda Lenhart: Your assumption is not correct. First teens do plenty of reading on tablets – websites, news articles, fan fiction, and plain old e-books. Plus, we don’t have a sense of whether technology and media use is a zero sum game – are they replacing reading with tablet time or TV watching? The Kaiser Family Foundation and Common Sense Media have done research that looks at how kids and teens spend their time with media and technology.

Lee Rainie: Not quite sure about reading more/less. Our adult data are pretty clear that many tablet owners and e-book reader owners (Kindles and Nooks) are reading MORE than in the past — sometimes in print, sometimes in e-formats. That’s a pretty typical “early adopter” pattern. They get the devices to do MORE of what they already like. (See the report, “The Rise of E-Reading.”)

Digital Family Summit: I am shocked that teens with $30K in income in their households -62% have smartphones . Even the cheapest data plan/phone stuff ends up around $600 a year.

Amanda Lenhart: Re: the uptake of cell and smartphones among the lower income youth – it’s true that it can be a significant expense for youth and families, but often it is in lieu of home internet access or a computer and families will stretch to get that access for their kids. Plus there are plans that don’t allow for much roaming, but offer unlimited data, texting and talking for a flat monthly fee of $30 or $40. So if you don’t get a chance to travel out of your city or neighborhood, then those phones and plans are great. This is really only an urban phenomenon – rural area are different.

Deb Levine: Thanks so much for the new report, Amanda, and the links. We’re finding that the results are in synch with a report we did last year of a sample of teens who visit popular online gaming sites. In particular, that youth of lower SES are using their non-smartphones for EVERYTHING — surfing the Web, gaming, purchasing, and communicating.

Amanda Lenhart: So glad to hear that our work reinforces yours! As for the ISIS question about how technology impacts mental and physical health, that’s a realm we haven’t entered, yet. But we hope to down the road. And you guys already do great work in the sexual health arena.

Amy Jussel: Are teens starting to use the ‘quantified self’ apps/data measurements/mobile or games/gizmos for both physical/mental health? (if so, what kind/format? fitness? nutrition? relationship help w/peers-parents? sexed/dating relational aggression, quiz Q&A?) Also, are they sharing data peer to peer or self-knowledge in focus?

Amanda Lenhart: We’ll have a short report about apps and youth (with a focus on privacy) out in the next few months, but we didn’t have survey room to focus much on what kinds of apps. Your questions is a great one, though – would be great to learn more about that.

Lee Rainie: Nielsen researchers are quite good about exploring apps use.

Amanda Lenhart: Alright everyone – thanks so much for a rip-roaring, terrific chat! Great questions – hope we can do this again soon! And please feel free to come find me and chat on Twitter. I’m @amanda_lenhart there.

Lee Rainie: Seems like there are lots of Amanda Lenhart fans here — how smart of you! You can see her amazing archive of work by scrolling down the links on this page.  And while you’re at it, please give equal time to our great colleague, Mary Madden, who was the main driver of this teens-and-tech report we’re discussing today:

Lee Rainie And a final plea: We would LOVE to hear stories from teens and their parents about how they use technology, navigate digital spaces, think about privacy, handling tough social situations on social media, share support and encouragement online — the whole range of human engagement. Write us at info@pewinternet.org and, better yet, sign up here to help us with surveys.

More than half of mobile application users have uninstalled or avoided certain apps due to concerns about the way personal information is shared or collected by the app, according to a nationally representative telephone survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

In all, 88% of U.S. adults now own cell phones, and 43% say they download cell phone applications or “apps” to their phones. Among app users, the survey found:

• 54% of app users have decided to not install a cell phone app when they discovered how much personal information they would need to share in order to use it
• 30% of app users have uninstalled an app that was already on their cell phone because they learned it was collecting personal information that they didn’t wish to share

Taken together, 57% of all app users have either uninstalled an app over concerns about having to share their personal information, or declined to install an app in the first place for similar reasons.

But a survey of technology experts and Internet stakeholders found that most of them generally believe the mobile revolution, the popularity of targeted apps, the monetization of online products and services, and innovations in cloud computing will drive Web evolution and make the open web stronger than ever in users’ lives.

These experts agreed with the view that while apps will be useful as specialized options for a finite number of information and entertainment functions, there will remain a widespread belief that, compared to apps, the Web is more important and useful and is the dominant factor in people’s online activity.

The minority view was that, by 2020, most people will prefer to use specific applications accessible by Internet connection to accomplish most online work, play, communication, and content creation because the ease of use and perceived security and quality-assurance of apps will be seen as superior when compared with the open Web.

Read the full report which contains excerpts of responses to the survey.

The share of adult cell phone owners who have downloaded an app to their phone nearly doubled in the past two years – rising from 22% in September 2009 to 38% in August 2011 – according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. The share of U.S. adults who purchased a phone already equipped with apps also increased five percentage points in the past year, from 38% in May 2010 to 43% in the current survey.

When both groups are accounted for-those whose phones came equipped with apps and those who have downloaded their own-fully half of U.S. adult cell phone owners (50%) now have apps on their phones. In May 2010, that figure stood at 43%. Looking at all U.S. adults, 42% now have cell phones with apps.

Read the full report for more on the survey, including:

• An overview of apps use among American adults
• Apps downloading in the context of popular mobile activities
• Whether people use the apps they download
• What types of apps adults are downloading
• Who pays for apps

Local news is going mobile. Nearly half of all American adults (47%) report that they get at least some local news and information on their cellphone or tablet computer.

The information they seek out on mobile platforms is practical and real time: 42% of mobile device owners report getting weather updates and 37% get material about restaurants or other local businesses on their phones or tablets. Fewer get news about local traffic and transportation, general news alerts or other local topics.

One of the newest forms of on-the-go local news consumption, mobile applications, are just beginning to take hold among mobile device owners. Just 13% of all mobile device owners report having an app that helps them get local information or news, which represents 11% of the total American adult population. Thus, while almost half of adults get local news on mobile devices, just 1 in 10 use apps to do so. Call it the “app gap.”

According to the survey, just 10% of adults who use mobile apps to connect to local news and information pay for those apps. This amounts to just 1% of all adults. Overall, 36% of adults report paying for some form of local news, the vast majority paying for local print newspaper subscriptions.

These findings come from a survey of 2,251 conducted in January by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Project for Excellence in Journalism, in partnership with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.

At the moment, few people pay for news online. One question in the news industry is whether the willingness to pay for online content would grow if people faced the prospect of their local media not surviving otherwise. Pressed on the value of online access to their local newspaper, 23% of survey respondents say they would pay $5 a month to get full access to local newspaper content online. When asked if they would pay $10 per month, 18% of adults say yes. Both figures are substantially higher than the percentage of adults (5%) who currently pay for online local news content. Nonetheless, roughly three-quarters say they would not pay anything.

When asked about the value of their local newspaper, the survey finds:

• 28% of Americans say the loss of the local newspaper would have a major impact on their ability to keep up with local information.

• 30% say it would have a minor impact

• 39% say the loss of the newspaper would have no impact.

While on the surface these findings may look bad for news organizations, there is some potentially good news in the data. The survey found that adults who consume local news on mobile devices are almost twice as likely as other adults to say they would be willing to pay to access their local newspaper online. The percentage willing to pay is even higher among local app users, so there’s evidence that this new mobile local news consumer sees value in their local newspaper.

When it comes to local news and information, here is the material people get:

• 42% of those who own cellphones or tablet computers use those devices to check local weather reports;

• 37% use the devices to find local restaurants or other businesses;

• 30% use the devices to get information or news about their local community;

• 24% use the devices to check local sports scores and get updates;

• 22% use the devices to get information about local traffic or public transportation;

• 19% use the devices to get or use coupons or discounts from local stores;

• 15% use the devices to get news alerts about community sent via text or email;

• 13% have an app on their device that helps them get information about their local community.

The survey was conducted between January 12, 2011, and January 29, 2011, and respondents were contacted on both landline and cell phones. For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling and other random effects is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.

Read the full report at pewinternet.org or at journalism.org.

Cell phone use in the U.S. has increased dramatically over the past decade. Fully eight-in-10 adults today (82%) are cell phone users, and about one-quarter of adults (23%) now live in a household that has a cell phone but no landline phone.

Along with the widespread embrace of mobile technology has come the development of an “apps culture.” As the mobile phone has morphed from a voice device to a multi-channel device to an internet-accessing mini-computer, a large market of mobile-software applications, or “apps,” has arisen.

Among the most popular are apps that provide some form of entertainment (games, music, food, travel and sports) as well as those that help people find information they need and accomplish tasks (maps and navigation, weather, news, banking). With the advent of the mobile phone, the term “app” has become popular parlance for software applications designed to run on mobile phone operating systems, yet a standard, industry-wide definition of what is, and is not, an “app” does not currently exist. For the purpose of this report, apps are defined as end-user software applications that are designed for a cell phone operating system and which extend the phone’s capabilities by enabling users to perform particular tasks.

The most recent Pew Internet & American Life Project survey asked a national sample of 1,917 cell phone-using adults if they use apps and how they use them. Broadly, the results indicate that while apps are popular among a segment of the adult cell phone-using population, a notable number of cell owners are not yet part of the emerging apps culture.

35% of adults have cell phones with apps, but only two-thirds of those who have apps actually use them.

Of the 82% of adults today who are cell-phone users, 43% have software applications or “apps” on their phones. When taken as a portion of the entire U.S. adult population, that equates to 35% who have a cell phone with apps. This figure includes adult cell phone users who:

• Have downloaded an app to their phone (29% of adult cell phone users).
• Have purchased a phone with preloaded apps (38% of adult cell phone users).

Yet having apps and using apps are not synonymous. Of those who have apps on their phones, only about two-thirds of this group (68%) actually use that software. Overall, that means that 24% of U.S. adults are active apps users. Older adult cell phone users in particular do not use the apps that are on their phones, and one-in-10 adults with a cell phone (11%) are not even sure if their phone is equipped with apps.

Apps users are younger, more educated and more affluent than other cell phone users.

When compared with other cell phone using adults, and the entire U.S. adult population, the apps user population skews male, and is much younger, more affluent and more educated than other adults. Overall, the apps-using population also skews slightly Hispanic when compared with other adult cell phone users.

App use still ranks relatively low when compared with other uses of cell phones.

While 24% of adults, and 29% of adults with cell phones, use applications on their phones, apps use still ranks relatively low when compared with other non-voice cell phone activities. Taking pictures and texting are far and away the most popular non-voice cell phone data applications, with more than seven-in-10 adult cell phone users embracing these features of their phones.

29% of adult cell-phone users have downloaded an app to their phone.

As with the apps-using population as a whole, downloaders are younger, more educated and disproportionately male when compared with the total U.S. adult population. And while they resemble adults who only have preloaded apps in terms of education, they are still disproportionately young and male even when compared with this group.

One-in-10 adult cell-phone users (10%) had downloaded an app in the past week; 20% of cell-phone users younger than age 30 download apps this frequently.

Those who download apps do so fairly frequently. Among apps downloaders, roughly half (53%) say their most recent download was in the past 30 days, including one-third (33%) who say their last download was within the past week. As a fraction of all cell phone-using adults, that equates to 15% who have downloaded apps in the past month, and 10% who have downloaded apps in the past week. Among cell-phone users younger than age 30, 20% have downloaded an app in the past week.

One-in-eight adult cell phone users (13%) have paid to download an app.

Among the 29% of adult cell-phone users who download apps, just under half (47%) have paid for an app, with the remainder saying they only download apps that are free. Put in broader context, that means that 13% of all adult cell phone users have paid to download an app to their phone. There are few notable demographic differences between downloaders who pay for apps and those who do not.

Among cell-phone users with apps, the average adult has 18 apps on his or her phone.

Among adult cell-phone users who have software applications on their cell phones, the mean number of apps is 18. However, the median number of apps is 10, indicating there are heavy apps users on the high end of the response scale who have a disproportionate number of apps on their phones. This is particularly true among the youngest adults.

Again, there is some uncertainty among cell-phone users, particularly older cell-phone users, about what software they have on their phones. Fully 18% of cell-phone users with apps on their phones do not know how many they have. That figure doubles to 36% among cell-phone users ages 50 and older.

Findings from the Nielsen Apps Playbook Survey

Nielsen data indicate that games are the most popular apps, followed by news/weather, maps/navigation, social networking and music.

In addition to drawing on results from the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s own nationwide probability sample of 2,252 adults, this report also presents findings from The Nielsen Company’s Apps Playbook, a December 2009 survey of a nonprobability sample of 3,962 adult cell phone subscribers who had downloaded an app in the previous 30 days. Although the Nielsen survey cannot be projected to the population of all app downloaders with a known degree of accuracy, it provides an extensive snapshot of the types of apps people are downloading and a broad sense of how they are using them.

Among the recent downloaders Nielsen surveyed, game apps were the most downloaded apps overall in terms of both volume and the percentage of adults who had downloaded them. In terms of actual apps use, six-in-10 of Nielsen’s recent downloaders (60%) said they had used a game app in the past 30 days, and roughly half said they had used a news/weather app (52%), a map/navigation app (51%) or a social networking app (47%) in that same timeframe. While music apps ranked second on the most downloaded list, they ranked fifth on the most used list.

In the Nielsen survey, most recent apps downloaders said they used their apps daily but for short periods of time, and used them in a variety of situations.

Some 57% of the recent apps downloaders in the Nielsen study said they use their apps daily. While one-quarter of these recent apps downloaders (24%) said they use their apps for more than 30 minutes a day, the vast majority said they spend less time using their apps each day.

Asked where they use their apps most frequently, 71% of the Nielsen sample said they frequently used their apps when they were alone, and about half said they frequently used their apps while waiting for someone or something (53%) or while at work (47%). One-in-three (36%) said they frequently used apps while commuting.

The Nielsen survey indicates that different people may use apps in different ways.

There were several notable differences among the Nielsen recent-downloader sample in terms of which apps they favored and how frequently they used them. For instance:

• Women in the sample were more likely than men to have used a social networking app in the past 30 days (53% vs. 42%), and women who used the Facebook app were also more likely to use that app everyday (64% vs. 55%).
• Women in the sample were more likely than men to have a used a game app in the past 30 days (63% vs. 58%), while men were more likely to have used a productivity app (29% vs. 21%) or a banking/finance app (31% vs. 25%).
• Among the Nielsen sample of recent downloaders, whites (53%) and Hispanics (47%) were more likely than African Americans (36%) to have used a map/navigation/search app in the month prior to the survey.
• Hispanics, on the other hand, were the most likely to have used a music app recently (48% of Hispanics vs. 42% of whites vs. 42% of African Americans).
• In the Nielsen sample, 75% of 18 to 24 year old Twitter app users reported using that app every day, compared with 52% of the 25 to 34 year olds and 48% of Twitter users ages 35 and older.
• In contrast, among Nielsen’s Facebook app users, 25 to 34 year olds were more likely than both younger and older Facebook app users to report using their Facebook app daily.
• The African Americans and Hispanics in the Nielsen sample were significantly more likely than whites to be daily users of their YouTube apps (33% of African Americans vs. 24% of Hispanics vs. 12% of whites) and their Pandora music apps (33% of African Americans vs. 27% of Hispanics vs. 14% of whites).

The Nielsen study indicates that cell phone screen real estate is valuable

Slight majorities of Nielsen’s recent app downloaders said they organize their apps so that the most frequently used are easily accessible (59%), and that they delete apps from their phones that are not useful or helpful (56%). And this culling process happens relatively quickly; among those who had deleted an app, 62% said they usually do it within two weeks of downloading the software. The men in the Nielsen sample deleted apps more quickly than women; 40% of the male recent-downloaders said they delete apps they did not find useful within a week, compared with 29% of the women.

Continue reading the full report at pewinternet.org.

Summary of Findings

Six-in-ten American adults are now wireless internet users, and mobile data applications have grown more popular over the last year.

As of May 2010, 59% of all adult Americans go online wirelessly. Our definition of a wireless internet user includes the following activities:

• Going online with a laptop using a wi-fi connection or mobile broadband card. Roughly half of all adults (47%) go online in this way, up from the 39% who did so at a similar point in 2009.
• Use of the internet, email or instant messaging on a cell phone. Two-in-five adults (40%) do at least one of these using a mobile device, an increase from the 32% of adults who did so in 2009.

Taken together, 59% of American adults now go online wirelessly using either a laptop or cell phone, an increase over the 51% of Americans who did so at a similar point in 2009.¹

Cell phone ownership has remained stable over the last year, but users are taking advantage of a much wider range of their phones’ capabilities compared with a similar point in 2009. Of the eight mobile data applications we asked about in both 2009 and 2010, all showed statistically significant year-to-year growth.

This year we also asked for the first time about seven additional cell phone activities. Among all cell phone owners:

• 54% have used their mobile device to send someone a photo or video.
• 23% have accessed a social networking site using their phone.
• 20% have used their phone to watch a video.
• 15% have posted a photo or video online.
• 11% have purchased a product using their phone.
• 11% have made a charitable donation by text message.
• 10% have used their mobile phone to access a status update service such as Twitter.

African-Americans and Latinos continue to outpace whites in their use of data applications on handheld devices.

Continuing a trend we first identified in 2009, minority Americans lead the way when it comes to mobile access — especially mobile access using handheld devices. Nearly two-thirds of African-Americans (64%) and Latinos (63%) are wireless internet users, and minority Americans are significantly more likely to own a cell phone than are their white counterparts (87% of blacks and Hispanics own a cell phone, compared with 80% of whites). Additionally, black and Latino cell phone owners take advantage of a much wider array of their phones’ data functions compared to white cell phone owners. It is important to note that our data for Hispanics represents English-speaking Hispanics only, as our survey did not provide a Spanish-language option.

Young adults are heavily invested in the mobile Web, although 30-to-49 year olds are gaining ground.

Nine-in-ten 18-to-29 year olds own a cell phone, and these young cell owners are significantly more likely than those in other age groups to engage in all of the mobile data applications we asked about in our survey. Among 18-29 year old cell phone owners:

• 95% send or receive text messages.
• 93% use their phone to take pictures.
• 81% send photos or videos to others.
• 65% access the internet on their mobile device.
• 64% play music on their phones.
• 60% use their phones to play games or record a video.
• 52% have used their phone to send or receive email.
• 48% have accessed a social networking site on their phone.
• 46% use instant messaging on their mobile device.
• 40% have watched a video on their phone.
• 33% have posted a photo or video online from their phone.
• 21% have used a status update service such as Twitter from their phone.
• 20% have purchased something using their mobile phone.
• 19% have made a charitable donation by text message.

Although young adults have the highest levels of mobile data application use among all age groups, utilization of these services is growing fast among 30-to-49 year olds. Compared with a similar point in 2009, cell owners ages 30 to 49 are significantly more likely to use a range of mobile data applications on a handheld device.

The mobile data applications with the largest year-to-year increases among the 30-to-49 year old cohort include taking pictures (83% of 30-to-49 year old cell owners now do this, a 12-point increase from 2009); recording videos (39% do this now, an 18-point increase from 2009); playing music (36% do this now, a 15-point increase); using instant messaging (35% now do this, a 14-point increase); and accessing the internet (43% now do this, a 12-point increase compared with 2009).

Continue reading the full report at pewinternet.org.

_{1. Because of changes in question wordings over time, our current wireless internet user definition is not directly comparable to any pre-2009 findings.}