Survey: 28% of American adults using mobile location services

Twenty-eight percent of American adults use their mobile phones to access location-based mobile and social services according to a new survey issued by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Click here to see a larger version of this chart from Pew.

Twenty-eight percent of all U.S. mobile subscribers (translating to 23 percent of adults) rely on their phones to get directions or recommendations based on their current location, Pew reports. Only 5 percent of users/4 percent of adults use geo-social services like foursquare and Gowalla to check in at local destinations, although 9 percent of Internet users/7 percent of adults have set up their social media profiles across platforms including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to automatically include their whereabouts in their posts on those services.

Pew adds that usage rises when the study focuses exclusively on smartphone owners. Fifty-five percent of smartphone users have accessed a location-based information service, and one in 10 have used a geo-social check-in tool.

Pew also notes the popularity of geo-social services and automatic tagging options vary significantly across demographics. A quarter of Hispanic smartphone owners leverage geo-social services and 31 percent enable automatic location tagging. And while only 7 percent of white smartphone owners use geo-social services, 59 percent access location-based information on their phones, a larger percentage than the 53 percent of blacks and 44 percent of Hispanics.

For more:
- read this Pew Internet & American Life Project report

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