A fast-growing portion of Americans depend only on smartphones for Internet access, but nearly half of that group faces high rates of service interruption for financial reasons, according to a new study conducted by the Pew Research Center. This "smartphone dependent" group tends to be poor and non-White, Pew says, raising the possibility of a new kind of digital divide.
Pew's survey found that 10% of Americans own a smartphone but do not have broadband at home, and 15% own a smartphone but say that they have a limited number of options for going online, aside from their cellphone. In all, 19% of American adults indicate that at least one of those conditions applies to them – making them dependent on smartphones for participating in the digital world. Critically, 13% of those with an annual household income of less than $30,000 per year are smartphone dependent, while just 1% of Americans from households earning more than $75,000 per year depend on their smartphones.
"For a fairly substantial proportion of the population, smartphones are definitely serving as a key utility for accessing all sorts of important information and services — and it's quite clear that this access is often most tenuous or intermittent for those users who rely on that access the most," said Aaron Smith, who co-authored the study.
The smartphone dependent group faces disconnection rates that are more than double the general population. Some 48% of the smartphone dependent group said they have had to cancel or suspend service due to "financial constraints," compared to 21% of the general population, Pew found.
And those lower income households are far more likely to need smartphones to perform basic Internet tasks such as hunting for a job. Those earning less than $30,000 annually are nearly twice as likely to use a smartphone to look for information about a job — and more than four times as likely to use their phone to submit a job application, Pew said.
Trouble with smartphone bills occurs across economic and racial divides — some 23% of smartphone owners overall have had to cancel or suspend their service for a period of time because the cost was a financial hardship, Pew says, and 7% said they "frequently" experience higher-than-expected utility bills. Meanwhile, 15% said they frequently reach their data maximums.
But service interruptions are obviously a bigger hardship on those who rely on smartphones as their only connection to the Internet, a group Pew is dubbing "smartphone dependent." Pew found that 12% of African Americans and 13% of Latinos are smartphone-dependent, compared with 4% of whites.