Skip to footer

GPS app usage rising among teenagers with smartphones

GPS app usage rising among teenagers with smartphones, as more and more teens use location services like Foursquare and Facebook to connect and meet up with friends.

|
Foursquare/AP
GPS app usage rising among teenagers with smartphones, as more and more teens use location services like Foursquare and Facebook to connect and meet up with friends. This is a screenshot from a "check-in" on Foursquare.

| San Jose, Calif.

There has been a lot of speculation but little really known about Americans’ use of location-based services (LBS) and geosocial services on cellphones. Thanks to some new research from the Pew Internet Project, the picture is starting to fill in.

Pew defines LBS as anything from  GPS-enabled map services to, for example, nearby restaurant reviews using an app or browser on one’s cellphone. Examples of geosocial services are “check-in” services like Foursquare and Gowalla, the latter recently acquired by Facebook.

The use of both types is rising with smartphone adoption, Pew found. Smartphone use went from 35% of US adults last May to 46% this past February, less than a year.

At last we have some data on teen use of location services! As of last July, almost a fifth (18%) of teen smartphone users use a geosocial service such as Foursquare. That’s 8% of teen cellphone owners and 6% of US 12-to-17-year-olds overall. Not surprisingly, older teens use them more than younger ones.

I say “not surprisingly” because part of the enjoyment of check-in services is being independently mobile so one can spontaneously go to meet friends who’ve checked into a specific location. Of course, more urban kids could use public transportation, but that cuts down on the spontaneity a bit, and younger kids generally need some measure of permission from a parent to move around the city on their own.

Here are some other numbers on use of location services:

  •  LBS: “Almost three-quarters (74%) of smartphone owners” use real-time LBS info on their phones, “up from 55% in May 2011.” So “the overall proportion of adults who get location-based information has almost doubled” in less than a year – 23% to 41%
  •  Geosocial use went from 12% to 18% of US adults in the same May-to-February period. Ninety-three percent of geosocial service users also use LBS 

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. Anne Collier blogs at NetFamilyNews.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to GPS app usage rising among teenagers with smartphones
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/Modern-Parenthood/2012/0518/GPS-app-usage-rising-among-teenagers-with-smartphones
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe