Nearly nine-in-ten Americans today are online, up from about half in the early 2000s.
According to the Pew Research Center,roughly three-quarters of Americans (77%) now own asmartphone, with lower-income Americans and those ages 50 and older exhibiting a sharp uptick in ownership over the past year, according a Pew Research Center survey conducted in November 2016. Smartphone adoption has more than doubled since the Center began surveying on this topic in 2011: That year, 35% of Americans reported that they owned a smartphone of some kind.
Smartphones are nearly ubiquitous among younger adults, with 92% of 18- to 29-year-olds owning one. But growth in smartphone ownership over the past year has been especially pronounced among Americans 50 and older. Nearly three-quarters (74%) of Americans ages 50-64 are now smartphone owners (a 16-percentage-point increase compared with 2015), as are 42% of those 65 and older (up 12 points from 2015). There has also been a 12-point increase in smartphone ownership among households earning less than $30,000 per year: 64% of these lower-income Americans now own a smartphone.