Over the past year, mobile data usage has more than doubled among all age groups with the biggest spike occurring among teenagers, according to a new report released today by Nielsen, which tallied up the number of megabytes consumed by users during the second quarter for seven different age brackets.
The really telling aspect of the chart is that every age group from the teens to the senior citizens dramatically increased their data usage in the second quarter compared to the same period a year earlier. The biggest adopters were the 13-17 year olds, who devoured 62 MB of data during an average month, up 343 percent from 14 MB a year earlier. On the other end of the spectrum, was the 65 and older crowd, who basically went from using nothing to gobbling up 21 MB a month.
Nielsen looked at the bills of 60,000 mobile subscribers, including teens, to show the increase in Megabyte usage were on average for a given monthly billing cycle.
The age group responsible for consuming the most data was the 25 to 34 year old crowd, who consumed 178 MB of data on average in the second quarter, up 128 percent from only 78 MB a year earlier. Meanwhile, the 18-24 year olds increased usage by 245 percent; the 35-44 year olds increased usage by 200 percent; the 45-54 year olds increased usage by 264 percent; and the 55-64 year olds increased usage by 200 percent.
The averages do a good job of illustrating the data growth the carriers have been reporting over the past year. They also show how how the typical consumer is still no where near the data caps that most carriers have in place. For instance, the “average user” would still easily fall under AT&T’s new data plan that caps usage is 2GB for $25 a month.

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