Platforms & Services

This sortable table provides data for levels of internet use, smartphone ownership and social media usage from 2013 to 2017 by country.

As people in advanced economies reach the upper bounds of internet penetration, the digital divide continues to narrow between wealthy and developing countries.

YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat are the most popular online platforms among teens. Fully 95% of teens have access to a smartphone and 45% say they are online almost constantly.

Just 31% of Americans say it would be very hard to give up their TV, down from 2006. In contrast, roughly half of cellphone owners say it would be very hard to give up their cellphone.

At the same time, the contours of connectivity are shifting: One-in-five Americans (20%) are now ‘smartphone only’ internet users at home.

For a recent study on automated accounts and Twitter, we had to answer a fundamental question: Which accounts are bots and which accounts aren’t? Read a Q&A with Stefan Wojcik, a computational social scientist at the Center and one of the report’s authors, on how he and his colleagues navigated this question.

U.S. adults are mostly against government action that could limit people’s ability to access and publish information online. There is more support for steps by technology companies.

Predictions from experts about the future of well-being in a tech-saturated world, from @pewresearch and @ImagineInternet.

Many experts say digital life will continue to expand people’s boundaries and opportunities. Yet nearly a third think that people’s overall well-being will be more harmed than helped in coming years.