In the growing realm of mobile news, men and the highly-educated emerge as more engaged news consumers. These findings parallel, for the most part, demographic patterns of general news consumption.
Overall, news consumption ranks high on mobile devices. Over a third report getting news daily on the tablet and the smartphone, putting it on par with other activities such as email and playing games on tablets and behind only email on smartphones. The popularity of news remains strong across all demographic groups studied, but is especially prevalent among men and the college educated. On the smartphone, differences also emerge in age and income.
Fully 43% of male tablet owners consume news daily on their device versus 32% of female tablet owners, a difference of 11 percentage points. The gap is nearly identical on smartphones (41% compared with 30% among women).
Educational differences in mobile news use are similar to the differences seen in gender, with greater disparity on the smartphone. A little over four-in-ten college educated owners get news on the tablet (41%) and the smartphone (44%). But among those with less than a college education daily news consumption falls to 35% on the tablet and 31% on the smartphone. Daily news consumption on the smartphone is also more prevalent among those with household incomes of more than $30,000.
Age, on the other hand, seems to be less of an indicator of mobile news consumption. This is particularly true on the tablet, where daily rates are similar across all four age groups studied (50- to 64-year-olds are a bit more likely than the youngest and oldest groups to get news). On the smartphone, owners under 50 get news at higher rates than those over 50. Read more
