Internet & Technology

With Grandparents Day coming up this Sunday, it’s a good time to look at how often and by what means Americans keep in touch with the eldest members of their families.

Americans see a number of economic threats from China, but they are also worried about cyberattacks, Bejing's human rights record, China's impact on the environment and its growing military strength.

Some 73% of online men use social media, on par with the 80% of online women who say they do so. But there are still some gender differences on specific platforms.

Our "always-on" mobile connectivity is changing the nature of public spaces and social gatherings. It's also rewriting social norms of what is rude and what is acceptable behavior.

For many Americans, cellphones are always present and rarely turned off. This creates new social challenges, as people believe that different public and social settings warrant different sensitivities for civil behavior.

It may seem as if basic or flip phones are a thing of the past, given that 73% of teens have a smartphone. But that still leaves 15% of teens who only have a basic cellphone and 12% who have none at all, and it makes a difference in the way each group communicates.

36% of adult smartphone owners use messaging apps, while 17% use apps that automatically delete sent messages. These types of apps are adding to an already complex terrain of digital and social communication. Meanwhile, social media platforms continue to attract dedicated users.

A look at how researchers analyzed news habits on Twitter using a small but representative sample of users drawn from a national survey of U.S. adults.