A new report from the Pew Internet Project has found that more than half of smartphone owners have used their phones to search for health information in the past year. They comprise 45 percent of all U.S. adults.
Smartphones form a smaller group of the overall, 85 percent of U.S. adults have cell phones. Of that broader population, 31 percent have used their phones to get health information, almost doubling the percentage (17 percent) that did so in a comparable survey in 2010.
Here are other key findings from the report:
- Women who are smartphone owners and between the ages of 30 and 64 are more likely to sign up for health-related text alerts compared with other cell phone owners.
- 19 percent of smartphone owners – or one in every five – have a health app on their phones. Weight loss, exercise and diet apps are the most popular.
- Latinos, African Americans, those between the ages of 18 and 49, and college graduates are more likely to search for health information than other demographics.
- Certain life experiences also make people more likely to search for health data on phones – becoming pregnant, gaining or losing a lot of weight, quitting smoking.
- People whose annual income is 75,000 and above and have a college education are more likely to be smartphone owners and more likely to search for health info using them.
The results are based on a nationwide survey of 3,014 U.S. adults with telephone interviews conducted using both landlines (1,808) and cell phones (1,206, including 624 without a landline phone). The survey was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, with interviews done in English and Spanish by Princeton Data Source from Aug. 7 to Sept. 6.
Read the full report here.
