Interesting data from the Pew Research Center’s “US Smartphone Use in 2015” report

If you need information on smartphone use in America, look no further than the Pew Research Center’s U.S. Smartphone Use in 2015 report. It’s a very thorough, 60-page document based on data from polls and surveys conducted in the October and November 2014. Using a technique called “experience sampling” — in which participants completed two surveys a day over a week — Pew were able to create “a unique and intimate portrait of smartphone usage” in the U.S..

Some notable items in the report:

• Nearly two-thirds of Americans own a smartphone. This is double the rate of ownership from just four years ago.
• There’s a small but significant portion of the population that’s “smartphone-dependent”:  their smartphone is their primary, and sometimes, their only way to the online world. 7% of American smartphone users don’t have a broadband internet access as home, nor do they have easy access to the internet from sources other than their smartphone. About 1 in 5 Americans rely on smartphones to some degree to go online, because their online access options are few.
• Smartphone ownership is often most tenuous for those who rely on them the most. About half of the smartphone-dependent have had to cancel or suspend their mobile service because it cost too much. The smartphone-dependent are also far more likely to hit their data plan maximum than other users.

If you need to know the state of smartphone use in the U.S. today, be sure to download Pew’s report [1.6 MB PDF]. We’ve taken some of the key points of this report and turned them into the infographics in this article, which you’re free to use in your presentations — all we ask is that you say that you got them from GSG.