Article: Young Moms Prefer Digital Communication

Mothers of all ages are ahead of the curve when it comes to internet and digital usage. eMarketer estimates 90.3% of women in the US with children under 18 in the house are online, compared with 76.3% of all adult females. Moms' penchant for social networking and other social media usage—such as maintaining and reading blogs—is also well known. Research from WhyMomsRule indicates that the youngest moms in particular have now moved more than half of their family communications outside the realm of face-to-face talking.

Gen Y moms polled said they conducted an average of 48% of communication with their immediate family in person. Talking on the phone was second, followed by texting. Taken together, Gen Y moms used email or Facebook for 17% of all immediate-family communications—especially notable considering immediate family was defined as people living in the same household.

Older mothers were less reliant on digital forms of communication to stay in touch with their immediate families and spent more time talking in person. In addition, boomer moms spent twice as much time communicating via email as they did on Facebook; even within the realm of the internet, the oldest group of mothers prefers more traditional forms of reaching out.

Boomer moms were also the most likely to say they didn't use Facebook at all, but even among that group just 32% of mothers shunned the social networking giant. They did tend to spend significantly less time on the site than their Gen X and Gen Y counterparts, however.

The largest percentage of younger moms reported using the site for at least 2 hours daily. Almost as many Gen Xers as boomers said they didn't visit Facebook at all, but those that did tended to spend 1 to 2 hours on the site each day.

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