Education, location remain large factors in mobile Internet use

More than 8 in 10 adults in the United States had a mobile phone as of 2012, but a new report finds education and population density are important factors in how people use their devices. 

The report by the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration showed a large increase over a year in the number of people using their phones to check email, browse the Web and download applications. 

{mosads}The report is based on census data from 53,000 households in October 2012. The survey did not measure what percentage of people had smartphones, but a Pew Research survey has found that more than half of adults reported owning one.  

In 2012, 42 percent of people used their phone to browse the Web, a 9-point increase in a year. The amount of people checking email (43 percent) and downloading applications (32 percent) also rose by 10 percent. 

However, people who have a college degree and live in an urban area are more likely to use phones for Web browsing. 

Fifty-five percent of people with a college degree and 44 percent who live in an urban setting use their phones to browse the Internet. That is compared to 21 percent with no high school diploma and 31 percent who live in a rural area. 

“In stark contrast to the modest and shrinking mobile phone adoption gap between urban and rural Americans, use of Internet-based applications on those mobile phones varied dramatically by population density,” the report finds. 

“Use of mobile phone-based Internet also differs greatly based on income,” according to the report. 

Race appears to be little factor in whether people access the Internet from their phones. Forty-two percent of white people, 41 percent of black people, and 41 percent of Hispanic people reported using their phones for Web browsing. Forty-seven percent of Asian respondents said the same. 

The report found females were slightly more likely to use their phones to access social networks. 

“There was no statistically significant relationship between gender and using email, browsing the Web, or downloading apps, but the model predicts that female mobile phone users were 5 percentage points more likely to use social networks on their devices than their male counterparts,” according to the report. “This suggests that gender may play a role in the choice to engage in social networking from a mobile phone.”