Women read more social media news links

0
17

By Roger Fidler
Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute

Women are much more likely than men to read news stories found within social media on their smartphones, according to the latest mobile media survey from the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute.

About three-quarters of the women who owned smartphones said they had interacted with social media, and 65 percent said they had read news stories found within social media in the week prior to participating in the survey.

By comparison, about two-thirds of men said they used their smartphones to interact with social media, and 54 percent said they had read news stories found within social media.

While men were somewhat more likely than women to consume content pro­vided directly by news organizations and to search the web for news on their smartphones, women and men tended to spend about the same amount of time using their smartphones for these activities.

About 60 percent of men and women overall said they spent more than 20 minutes on a typical day with news organization content and nearly as much time searching the web for news on their smartphones.

Around one-third of men and women overall spent more than 20 minutes on a typical day reading news found on social media.

Among the survey’s other findings:

• More than half of smartphone owners age 18 to 54 said they spent the majority of their usage time on activities that required Internet access. About a quarter of owners 55 or older said they spent the majority of their usage time on Internet activities.

• Owners 18 to 34 were found to be the most likely to search the Web for news on their smartphones. They also tended to spend more time with this activity than older owners.

Nearly 1,200 randomly selected U.S. adults participated in RJI’s third annual Mobile Media News Consumption survey between Jan. 1 and March 31.

For more information and infographics on this study, visit rjionline.org/research.