Social media drives the young to mobiles ahead of TV

THE latest adult media literacy survey conducted by UK communications regulator OFCOM has found that for the first time the 16-24 age group say they would miss mobile phones ahead of TV – a development that has been largely driven by social media use.

TV remains the media that would be missed the most for the UK as a whole, although it has decreased – from 50 per cent in 2009 to 44 per cent in 2010. Amongst the 16-24 age group, 28 per cent would miss mobile phones ahead of TV (23 per cent).

Among children aged 12-15, television is no longer the most-missed media (24 per cent), as 26 per cent say they’d most miss their mobile and 24 per cent say the internet. A quarter of children aged 8-15 with a smartphone say that they regularly use it to visit social networking sites.

The popularity of mobile phones among 12-15s is also reflected by the estimated number of text messages sent per week doubling since 2007 with 113 texts sent per week compared with 54 in 2007.

Over half of children aged 8-15 who use the internet at home now have a social networking profile

Overall, 54 per cent of children aged 8-15 who use the internet at home have a social networking profile, an increase of nine percentage points since 2009. This is now the same percentage as for adult internet users (54 per cent compared with 44 per cent in 2009).

Within this, around a third (34 per cent) of children aged 8-12 who use the internet at home have a social networking profile on sites that require users to register as being 13 or over (such as Facebook, Bebo or MySpace), up from a quarter in 2009. This rises to 47 per cent of 10-12 year olds.

Twitter: @ismonthly @nwsocialmedia

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/InsideSocialMedia

LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/an4v02

Leave your comments:
(Please note all comments are subject to an approval process before publication, no HTML or scripts allowed.)