Mobile News Consumption on the Rise, Says Pew Research Center

It's pretty well known by now that mobile computing has not only taken off, it's taken over. As a result, mobile computing has affected the way that Americans interact with the digital world, including the way they consume media and news.

In fact, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, half of all adult Americans now own either a tablet device or a smartphone, while one third use a mobile device to view news stories and video clips at least once per week. Meanwhile, about 20 percent of the mobile news consumers surveyed said they paid for an online subscription in the last year.


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The survey, which polled more than 9,500 adults between late June and early August, went on to add that this mobile consumption of news has "major implications for how news will be consumed and paid for."

However, mobile viewing doesn't seem like it will eclipse other forms of news delivery — at least, not yet; almost one third of the mobile news users from the Pew survey still have print news subscriptions, with no plans to give them up.

Still, though, approximately half of tablet news users surveyed said that their tablets do cause them to spend more time consuming news, while about one third said they get news from new sources discovered from tablet news browsing.

The survey also mentioned that Android tablets may finally be taking hold in the market as it was found that just over half of tablet owners surveyed were using an iPad, down from a much more commanding 81 percent last year. As such, 48 percent of this year's respondents were using an Android device.

Meanwhile, a study released a year ago from Pew stated that 35 percent of American adults were using smartphones — a number which has most certainly grown since that time.

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