News Consumption Shifting to Mobile Devices

News consumption ranks high among activities people conduct on mobile devices, a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism has found.  

Over a third of respondents report getting news daily on the tablet and the smart phone, putting it on par with other activities such as email and playing games on tablets and behind only email on smart phones. 

None of that should come as a surprise, given the dominant role of content consumption on tablets, and the growing role of content consumption on smart phones. 

Fully 43 percent of male tablet owners consume news daily on their device versus 32 percent of female tablet owners. The gap is nearly identical on smartphones (41 percent compared with 30 percent among women).

As you might guess, younger users are heavier users. On the tablet, male news users under 50 are more likely than female news users under 50 (and both genders over 50) to check news more than once a day. 

Nearly half of male tablet news users under 50 (48 percent) get news on their tablet multiple times during the day compared to 33 percent of women under 50 and 31 percent of men and women 50 and over.

Male news users under 50 are more avid readers of in-depth news articles on the tablet. Fully 84 percent do so at least sometimes, compared to 70 percent of women under 50 and 65 percent of both genders over 50.