About 25 percent of U.S. teens are “cell-mostly” Internet users, who report they mostly go online using their phone and not using some other device such as a desktop or laptop computer, a new study by the Pew Research Center has found.
Few would extrapolate in linear fashion to future behavior when those teens grow older and join the workforce. But, as always, youth behavior tends to be a strong indicator of what their preferences will be in the workplace.
“So the money quote is that the nature of teens Internet use has transformed dramatically, from stationary connections tied to shared desktops in the home to always-on connections that move with them throughout the day,” says Mary Madden, Senior Researcher for the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project.
About 74 percent of teens ages 12 to 17 say they access the Internet on mobile phones, tablets, and other mobile devices at least occasionally, but the 25 percent who say they do so “mostly” on a mobile phone is higher than the 15 percent of adult users who say they are “mobile mostly.”
By comparison, 55 percent of adults use the Internet from a mobile device. However, this gap is driven primarily by adults ages 65 and older.
Adults under the age of 50, on the other hand, are just as likely as teens to be mobile Internet users. Fully 74 percent of adults 18 to 49 access the Internet on a mobile phone, tablet, or other mobile device.
In some cases, teens might use a mobile because they do not have access to a desktop or laptop computer. About 80 percent of teens have their own computer at home.
Among the 20 percent of teens who do not have their own computer, 67 percent have access to one they can use at home. Taken together, this means that 93 percent of teens have a computer or access to one.
The implication there is that teens mostly use mobile to access the Internet because they prefer to use such access. Among teen smartphone owners, 50 percent say they use the Internet mostly using their mobile phone.
The findings show not only the prevalence of use of mobile data, but also that mobile access is disproportionately more important for lower-income adults. Adults with an annual household income of less than $50,000 per year and those who have not graduated college are more likely than those with higher levels of income and education to use their phones for most of their online browsing.
Edited by
Brooke Neuman 
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