Examining Geosocial Mobile App Usage Among American Adults

A recent study released by Pew Research Center on the use of mobile and social location-based services, confirmed that almost six out of ten of smartphone owners use a geosocial or a location-based information service of some kind these days.

We’ve seen similar studies from the Pew Research Center regarding mobile phone Internet usage; however, this particular survey, conducted this past Spring, asked 2,227 adults about mobile phone usage relating to location-based activities. The survey results revealed that 55% of smartphone owners use their phones to get location-based directions or recommendations, while geosocial services and location-tagging features are less popular (only 12%).

As noted by Kathryn Zickuhr, Pew Internet Project research specialist and co-author of the report, American smartphone users don’t really have a desire at this point to share their location with the world. However, they do seem to be utilizing their phones’ geolocation capabilities to get fast access to location-relevant information.

Some highlights from the study included demographic information about which groups have higher-than-average rates of location service usage:

Smartphone owners
One in ten smartphone owners have used a geosocial (“check in”) service such as Foursquare or Gowalla, and 55% of smartphone owners have used a location-based information service.

Younger users
Smartphone owners ages 18-49 are more likely than those over 50 to use either geosocial or location-based services on their phones.

Non-whites
Geosocial services and automatic location-tagging are most popular with minorities, continuing a trend of mobile connectivity that has been seen in other Pew Internet surveys.

See the full demographic breakdown in the full study.