Youth & cellphones: Study

Younger cellphone owners have different feelings about and different ways of using their phones from those of older American phone users, according to a survey by AOL, the Associated Press, and the Pew Internet & American Life Project that was reported worldwide. For example, 18-to-29-year-old users (the youngest age group Pew looked at) "are more likely [than phone owners 30+] to use their phones as personal computers, digital music players, cameras, and more," the AP reports. Pew listed a lot more differences: Younger phone owners are "more likely to reserve their calls until the hours that do not affect the minutes used in their rate plan; more likely to make spontaneous calls when they have free time they want to kill; more likely to use their cellphone to avoid disclosing where they are; and more likely to feel burdened by the intrusions the cell brings into their lives; and more likely to experience sticker shock when monthly bills arrive."

For teen phone users as well as the young adults in Pew's study, social-networking will drive the next-generation cellphone market, Silicon.com reports. MySpace will have its own phone, in a deal with Helio announced last month, and earlier this week "Facebook announced deals with Cingular Wireless, Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless to enable users to post messages to their Facebook profiles via SMS text messaging." For further evidence, see also this press release about JuiceCaster 2.0 for phone-created Web content (enabling more kid-produced media on the Web).