Smart Phones Displace Computers For More College Students

Student Smartphone Use Doubles; Instant Messaging Loses Favor

Kelly Truong  / June 17, 2010, 04:44 PM ET / Chronicle Of Higher Education / Wired Camps

Smartphone use among college students has almost doubled since early last year, a study by a researcher at Ball State University found.

[http://tinyurl.com/22rxnxu]

The study confirms what has become common knowledge: cellphones are almost ubiquitous on college campuses, with 99.8 percent of students owning one or more. But in the national survey of about 500 students—which has been conducted twice a year since 2005—new details emerged on the kind of phones they own and how they use them.

Of those phone-owning students, 49 percent now have smartphones, compared with 38 percent last October and 27 percent in February 2009.

Text messaging has overtaken not just e-mail but also instant messaging in popularity. Ninety-seven percent of students use text messages as their main form of communication, as opposed to 30 percent for e-mail and 25 percent for instant messaging.

Approximately 90 percent of smartphone owners use their phones to access the Internet. Ninety-seven percent use their phones to take and send photos, while 87 percent of users take and send videos.

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Source

[http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Student-Smartphone-Use/24876/]