Pavel Prikhodko, Ph.D. Machine Learning
We are living in a time when everybody is looking down. It doesn’t matter whether people are feeling happy or rather blue; they all look down – down to their gadgets. Sometimes people lift their heads, but seemingly just to take a photo using their tablet or smartphone. Everyone has a photo album on their smartphone, but let’s examine the most popular subjects for taking photos.
According to a survey published at Statista.com, most Americans take photos of animals and life events, including graduations, marriages and birth (63 percent as of March 2015). About 60 percent of people using a smartphone in the United States took travel photos. People aged 18 to 24 most commonly took these photos, making up 62 percent of all people who took them. During the survey period, 54 percent of respondents took nature photos with their smartphone, and once again most of them were people aged 18 to 24: 64 percent. Forty-three percent of respondents took parenting photos that captured their kids and home life. If we examine the age of this group, we see that parenting photos were mostly taken by people aged 35 to 44 (57 percent).
Architecture is one of those beautiful subjects that respondents couldn’t ignore: 40 percent (55 percent for people aged 18 to 24) said they photographed it with their smartphones. One of the greatest phenomena of our time is the selfie. People who took selfies were mainly young (18 to 24), constituting 67 percent of the total number. In total, 37 percent of American respondents took selfies in March 2015. Food lovers took 36 percent of all photos, with the largest share of people who took food photos again being young respondents: 59 percent. Music concerts and gigs were the subjects of photos shot with a smartphone for 31 percent of respondents, and it’s no surprise that young people took the largest share with 55 percent. About 35 percent of respondents aged 35 to 44 took sports photos. Of all respondents, 29 percent said they used their smart phones to take photos of sporting events.
The most popular subject for people aged 25 to 34 was live events – 70 percent of them photographed them with their smartphones. Travel was the main photo subject for respondents aged 35 to 44, at 60 percent. Animals were the most popular subject for older people (those who were 45 and older), with 62 percent of respondents photographing them.
In March 2015, women took photos with their smartphones more actively than men: 65 percent versus 48 percent. It is also interesting to consider the percentage of smartphone owners who take photos with their phone by the number of children in their household. Thus, 75 percent of respondents with two or more kids took photos using their smartphone. The share of respondents with one child who used their smartphone for photos was almost 70 percent. Only 51 percent of respondents with no children took smartphone photos.
Looking back on the data, it’s clear that younger adults and parents most often take photos using their smartphone. While this may be unsurprising to some, it will be interesting to see how the ratios change in the future with a near-universal proliferation of smartphones as children who grew up with the technology enter adulthood.
About Pavel Prikhodko
Pavel Prikhodko, Ph.D. Machine Learning
Pavel has worked for many years as a researcher and developer on a wide range of applications (varying from mechanics and manufacturing to social data, finance and advertising), building predictive systems and trying to find stories that data can tell.
In his free time, he enjoys being with his family.
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