Even with older Americans, mobile is gaining on print

A number jumped out at me in the Pew report Americans and their Gadgets: 58 percent of Americans 65 and older own cell phones.

That made sense to me. My mother is 83 years old and has Alzheimer’s disease and a cell phone is her only phone. It’s not a smart phone and I know better than to text her or leave her a voice mail, but we talk on it frequently (well, not as frequently as we should, but that’s my fault).

I wondered whether newspaper readership among older Americans was higher than 58 percent. Yes, it is, but the figures are getting close. The age charts for newspaper readership in the State of the Media report shows that in 2008, the percentage of Americans reading a daily (or Sunday) newspaper was in the mid-60s and dropping. Should be low 60s by now, unless the downward trend has stopped. Newspaper Association of America figures by age show similar numbers, though they only go through 2007 and show numbers for Americans 55 and older.

So yes, more senior citizens read newspapers than use cell phones. But doesn’t the fact that the lines appear likely to cross soon underscore why news organizations need strong mobile strategies?

And, in case you were wondering, every demo younger than 65 has significantly more cell phone users than newspaper readers.

(Thanks to Brian Smith, for a blog post about mobile opportunities that linked to me and called my attention to the Pew study.)

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