Americans’ support for school cellphone bans has ticked up since last year
More than four-in-ten Americans (44%) back bans on student cellphone use during the entire school day, up from 36% last fall.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Short Reads
Short-form data and analysis from Pew Research Center writers and social scientists. To view all our reports and publications, visit our main Publications page.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter
Fresh data delivered Saturday mornings
-
5 facts about the state of the news media in 2017
Audiences for nearly every major sector of the U.S. news media fell in 2017 except for radio. Cable news revenue continued to rise, as did digital ad revenue.
-
A majority of Americans support using biotechnology to grow human organs in animals for transplants
Almost six-in-ten Americans consider it an appropriate use of technology to genetically engineer animals to grow organs or tissues that could be used for humans needing a transplant, while 41% say this would be going too far.
-
How Americans and Western Europeans compare on 4 key social and political issues
Americans and Western Europeans have broadly similar views on certain social and political issues. For example, majorities of Americans and Western Europeans see immigrants as beneficial to their economies and support certain rights for gays and lesbians.
-
Americans are divided over the use of animals in scientific research
There is a gender gap in views of the use of animals in scientific research. Those with a high level of science knowledge are more inclined to approve of such research.
-
14% of Americans have changed their mind about an issue because of something they saw on social media
A small share of the public – 14% – say they have changed their views about a political or social issue in the past year because of something they saw on social media.
-
Middle children have become rarer, but a growing share of Americans now say three or more kids are ‘ideal’
Roughly four-in-ten U.S. adults think families of three or more children are ideal. Yet it’s still much more common for American women at the end of their childbearing years to have had one or two kids than three or more.
-
Record number of forcibly displaced people lived in sub-Saharan Africa in 2017
The number of people living in sub-Saharan Africa who were forced to leave their homes due to conflict reached a new high of 18.4 million in 2017, up sharply from 14.1 million in 2016 – the largest regional increase of forcibly displaced people in the world.
-
Why America’s ‘nones’ don’t identify with a religion
Six-in-ten religious “nones” in the U.S. say the questioning of religious teachings is a very important reason for their lack of affiliation. The second-most-common reason is opposition to the positions taken by churches on social and political issues.
-
For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades
Despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage in the U.S. has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And most of what wage gains there have been have flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.
-
Most European students are learning a foreign language in school while Americans lag
A median of 92% of European students are learning a language in school. Far fewer K-12 students in the U.S. participate in foreign language education.
