Pew: One in Five Cell Users Favor Phones for Web Search

According to a new Pew study, one in five adult cell phone users now do more online browsing on their phones than on a desktop or laptop or tablet.

Those online surfers tend to skew younger, college-educated, financially better off, urban and suburban (rather than rural), and minorities.

The report on adult cell phone use found that 63% of adult cell phone owners use their phones to surf the Web, up 8% from a similar 2012 study, and almost double the percentage (34%) in a 2009 survey. Of those, 34% say the phone is their primary web-searching tool.

The 18-29 demo is the most likely to be using their phone to surf (85%), while only 22% of those 65-plus do so.

Three quarters of African Americans (74%) and 68% of Hispanics are cell Internet users.

The study was a national phone survey April 17-May 19, 2013, among 2,252 adults 18-plus. The margin of error for all cell phone users is plus or minus 2.4 percentage points. For cell phone surfers, the margin is 3.3%.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.