Friday, March 07, 2008
What Technology Would It Be Hardest For You To Give Up?
by
A new Pew Internet study shows people would have a more difficult time giving up their cell phone than any other technology. As the table at right shows, cell phones are followed by the Internet, television, and landline telephones as the toughest to do without.
There are some big changes in the 2007 results. Cell phones have replaced landline phones at the top of the list and the Internet has moved ahead of television into second place. Landline phones have seen the most precipitous decline in the last five years, and Blackberries or other PDAs have seen the most significant rise in the chart.
The results are not surprising considering that the newest generations of cell phones/PDAs are now ubiquitously capable of providing all of the other technologies in the list. This also points to the ascendancy of mobile as the prime communications channel in the years ahead.
The Pew report was conducted in December of 2007 and published this week. It shows growing sophistication on the part of mobile users that will make this technology more useful and indispensable in the future. Pew asked respondents how much they had used ten data and communication activities that can be performed on a cell phone/PDA. These activities included:
• Send or receive text messages
• Take a picture
• Play a game
• Send or receive email
• Access the Internet for news, weather, sports, or other information
• Record a video
• Play music
• Send or receive instant messages
• Get a map or directions to another location
• Watch video
The most widely used activity was text messaging. Out of all cell phone/PDA users, 58 percent had participated in text messaging and 31 percent did so on a daily basis.
As anyone with a teenager could easily surmise, the Pew report points out that the younger the age group, the more frequently these ten key communication activities are performed. For example, 60 percent of people ages 18 -29, use text messaging on a daily basis. See the PDF of the report at the link above for further elaboration and information.
