Investigating Age & Cell Phone Use

1. Investigating Age & Cell Phone Use EDTC 5103 – Fall 2013 Traci Richardson

2. What is being investigating? • Hypothesis: Younger individuals are more likely than older individuals to access the internet from cell phones because they spend a greater portion of their time using cell phones. • Independent Variable: Age • Dependent Variable: Time spent using cell phones to access the internet

3. About the participants • N= 56 • Number of female participants: 34 • Number of male participants: 22 • Participants ranged in age from 18 to 77 • All participants had lived in or currently lived in Oklahoma and were born in the United States of America • Surveys administered from November 6, 2013 through November 9, 2013

4. Survey statements • Participants were asked to respond to five statements by rating their agreement on a 4-point Likert scale where a score of 4 = Strongly Agree, 3 = Agree, 2 = Disagree, 1 = Strongly Disagree • The survey statements were: • I regularly use my cell phone to access the internet. • I spend more than one hour a day accessing websites from my cell phone. • I only use my cell phone to make and receive phone calls or to send and receive text messages. • I use my phone to check email more than I use my computer to check email. • I spend more than an hour a day browsing the internet from my phone.

5. What I found • Overall, the younger the participants, the higher the reported agreement with statements 1, 2, 4, and 5. • Additionally, the older the participants, the higher the reported agreement with statement 3.

6. Reported cell phone internet usage • Questions 1 and 4 asked participants about how regularly they use their phone to access the internet and check their email, respectively. • From the responses, it can be inferred that the older an individual, the less likely it is that they will use their phone on a regular basis to access the internet or check their email.

7. Time spent using phones to access the internet • For questions 2 and 5, a similar pattern emerged as seen with questions 1 and 4. • There appears to be an inverse relationship between age and spending more than an hour per day accessing websites and browsing the internet.

8. But what are people using their phone to do the rest of the time? • The strongest trend seemed to appear with the results of question 3. • When broken down by age group, the percentage of individuals who agreed with question three increased with age. • The results of this question support the hypothesis that younger individuals are using their phones more often to access the internet.

9. Conclusions • Based on participants’ responses to the survey questions, there is a relationship between age and cell phone use for internet access. • The younger an individual, the more likely it is that they spend more than an hour a day using their phone to access the internet. • Additionally, the older an individual, the more likely it is that they only use their phone to make or receive phone calls or send and receive text messages. • Over the next 20-30 years, I would predict that the number of individuals in the older age groups who are using their phones to access the internet will dramatically increase as the population ages.