The Hard(Soft) Facts of Cell Phone Use
(additional post #7)
In a recent article by Corinne Bagish published on social media trend website, Mashable.com, a January 2014 study of cell phone use and app behavior was broken down into a rather amusing yet informative infographic. The results were likely not what most consumers of digital media would expect. Here a few of the surprising findings.
81% of cellphone users send or receive text messages. This percentage seems somewhat low, considering that the primary mode of communication, at least for young people ages 18-24, seems to be texting. No one uses their phone to actually talk on the phone to another human being anymore. Texting is the new talking. Everyone is doing it - even your mom. I am sure this number is higher now, in 2015.
54% of cell phone users check their mobile email inbox before bed, and 49% check it when they wake up. This is also somewhat surprising, but for a few reasons. Firstly, I find it hard to believe that a majority of cell phone users “check” their inboxes. Don’t most people have automatic notifications sent to their phone when they receive a new email, as if it were a text? Hmm. I’m skeptical of this active “checking” business. Secondly, while there is no evidence presented in the study to support this, I imagine that this set of statistics pertains mostly to older cell phone users, likely over the age of 35. Many of the young, college-aged people I know are absolutely horrible at responding to emails. Therefore, I have hard time buying that nearly half of them check and interact with their email inbox upon rousing themselves from bed in the morning.
48% of cell phone users listen to music on their device. Again, this is surprising because nearly everyone I know (in the 18-24 age range), listens to music on their phone. Long gone are the days of the iPod and iTouch. Why would anyone have two separate devices when one phone can do the job of both? While I understand that some older cell phone users are not likely to use their phones as music-streaming vehicles, I still expect this percentage to be higher than almost half of the cell phone-using population. The music-streaming market is especially relevant to companies and brands looking to advertise their products or services, especially locally. A study conducted on the percentage of consumers referred to a product or service as a result of an ad on Spotify or Pandora, for example, will likely rival this particular study finding and show a larger percentage of users on the traditional music streaming apps. Perhaps all of my criticism stems from my tunnel-vision view of the digital world, as I only know and interact with younger, college-aged people. Therefore, the only cell phone and app behavior I am exposed to is that of my own and my peers. That being said, it seems there is some serious under-reporting happening on behalf of cell phone users when it comes to studies such as these. In conclusion, take such fancy infographics with a grain of well-meaning salt. Maybe it is time to reconsider our dependency on our mobile devices, especially when digital consumers of today now include anyone who still uses a thumb-sucking like product...
