With Mother’s Day upon us, we are all about mom. Beautiful, strong, selfless and nurturing are all ways we can describe her. However, in 2012, let’s add a few more words to that description list: connected, social and mobile. These three words represent a modern mom, based on the newly released Moms and Media 2012 report from Edison Research and Arbitron.

The report, which is drawn from the 20th Edison Research/Arbitron Internet and Multimedia Research series, showcases how moms are using technology and consuming various forms of media. The data shows us that moms have some strong characteristics and tendencies that continue to take shape as they become more invested with smartphones, social networking and just getting online in general.

In the Moms and Media 2012 report, we see that over a decade, moms’ time with the Internet has soared and she is logging well over 2.5 hours per day online. By comparison, in 2002 she clocked in only 53 minutes. Technology allows Mom to use the Internet for almost everything: shopping, banking, social networking and looking up information not only for her but for the family.

Moms confirm what we assume from their heavy usage: that the Internet is essential to their lives. 58% of moms in this year’s study said the Internet is “most essential,” which is a giant increase from where it was in 2002, a mere 17%.

While online, moms are using social media–specifically Facebook. In 2012, 72% of moms have a profile page on Facebook, which is up from the 62% in last year’s study. Moms are still discovering Facebook, so this number will likely continue to grow.

Not only are moms registered with social media sites like Facebook, they are using them often. Our research shows that 46% of social networking moms use those sites several times per day. This trend has been consistently on the rise, especially with the increased popularity of smartphones among this target group.

Moms continue to flock to the smartphone, outpacing Americans 12+ in ownership. More than three in five moms(61%) own a smartphone, compared to 44% of total Americans 12+. Smartphones are becoming a necessity for moms and they continue to be a driving force in the sales boom for these mobile devices.

The complete presentation slides for Moms and Media 2012 can be viewed below, or Download Moms and Media 2012 from Edison Research here.

How the study was conducted

A total of 2,020 persons were interviewed to investigate Americans’ use of digital platforms and new media. From January 20 to February 19, 2012, telephone interviews were conducted with respondents age 12 and older chosen at random from a national sample of Arbitron’s Fall 2011 survey diarykeepers and through random digit dialing (RDD) sampling in geographic areas where Arbitron diarykeepers were not available for the survey. Diarykeepers represent 45% of the completed interviews and RDD sampled respondents represent 55% of the completed interviews. The study includes a total of 500 cell phone interviews.

The Daily Deals Consumer 2012 is a new research study from Edison Research, derived from the 20th Edison Research/Arbitron Internet and Multimedia Research Series. This study examines companies like Groupon, Living Social and Gilt to uncover who is using these services, why, and what the potential impacts are for brands and products. The study also offers several implications and recommendations based upon insights generated by the data.

The findings of this study include the following:

* Nearly one in six Americans 12+ (15%) are users of these services

* Two-thirds of “Daily Deals” users are women

* “Daily Deals” users are significantly more likely to use social networks

The complete report can be downloaded here.

View the report on Slideshare:

How the study was conducted

A total of 2,020 persons were interviewed to investigate Americans’ use of digital platforms and new media. From January 20 to February 19, 2012, telephone interviews were conducted with respondents age 12 and older chosen at random from a national sample of Arbitron’s Fall 2011 survey diarykeepers and through random digit dialing (RDD) sampling in geographic areas where Arbitron diarykeepers were not available for the survey. Diarykeepers represent 45% of the completed interviews and RDD sampled respondents represent 55% of the completed interviews. The study includes a total of 500 cell phone interviews.

About Edison Research

Edison Research conducts survey research and provides strategic information to radio stations, television stations, newspapers, cable networks, record labels, Internet companies and other media organizations. Edison Research is also the sole provider of election exit poll data for the six major news organizations: ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC and the Associated Press. Edison Research works with many of the largest American radio ownership groups, including Entercom, Clear Channel, CBS Radio, Bonneville, Dial Global and Hubbard; and also conducts strategic and opinion research for a broad array of companies including Time Warner, Google, Yahoo!, Sony Music, the Voice of America, See Saw Networks and Zenithmedia. Edison Research has an eighteen year history of thought-leadership in media research, and has provided services to successful media properties in South America, Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe.

About Arbitron

Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) is a media and marketing information services firm primarily serving radio, television, cable, advertising agencies, advertisers, retailers, out-of-home media, and online media. Arbitron’s core businesses are measuring and estimating network and local market radio audiences across the United States; providing application software used for analyzing our media audience and marketing information data; and providing consumer, shopping, and other media usage information services. The Company has developed the Portable People MeterTM, a new technology for media and marketing research.

On April 10th, Edison and Arbitron will debut the The Infinite Dial 2012: Navigating Digital Platforms, the latest in a research series which has now hit a remarkable milestone. This year’s report is our 20th study of America’s media and technology consumption habits, and represents the richest longitudinal mine of such data in the world. We’ve been tracking things like the usage of Internet radio for well over a decade – which makes this year’s jump in that particular behavior all the more remarkable.

This year, we are reporting that the weekly usage of Internet radio (which includes both the online streams of terrestrial broadcasters and streams from pure-play streamers such as Pandora) has increased from 22% of Americans 12+ in 2011 to 29% in 2012 – a jump of over 30%. This is a number that we are accustomed to seeing grow bit by bit each year, but this is the largest year-over-year increase we’ve seen since we began tracking this stat in 1998. It’s easy to say that this kind of discontinuous jump is due to the increased usage of Pandora or Slacker or iHeartRadio or other individual brands, but I think there is a different dynamic at play here, driven by another discontinuous jump.

We’ll reveal our number on April 10th, but let’s just say that the percentage of Americans – mainstream Americans – who now own smartphones is going to show some growth, to put it mildly. The success of some of today’s popular on-demand and streaming Internet audio services is partially of their own doing, but also partially a trailing variable of the rise in smartphones and mobile media consumption. True, we’ve been able to consume digital media on the go for over a decade, but there has always been some friction involved with this process. I don’t know the hard cap on the number of Americans who would program their own playlists by mood and music type and then upload that content to their phones and iPods, but I’m going to suggest that the number of Americans who now own smartphones has blown right by that hard cap.

The friction involved in mobile digital media consumption has now been removed for vast numbers of mainstream Americans who want someone else to program their content for them–and that’s what the mobile Internet has really enabled. In a sense, the continued penetration of smartphones is encouraging something of a radio renaissance, though it doesn’t look like your father’s Victrola. Mobile phones are increasingly providing the digital soundtrack to people’s lives on the go – just count the white earbuds, Beats, Boses and other headphones the next time you walk down Main Street. Previously those earbuds delivered mostly our own music files, but what our data shows is that there is pent-up demand for frictionless, mobile audio programming to provide that soundtrack for us, and smartphones are opening the floodgates.

Thanks to the myriad online music services available, music as “product’ has become an economic commodity, and the delivery of that commodity akin to trucking wheat. Since “cost” is not a competitive dimension, and everyone has access to the same product, how that product is packaged and delivered is all you have. Smartphones have changed the game here from music as active entertainment choice to music as the quite literal soundtrack to your life. And that’s the dimension many of these services are lacking.

Today, I have thousands of sources to hear a stream of great 80′s hits, or hair bands, or Bon Iver clones, or songs with guest raps by Pit Bull. The smart Internet audio providers of tomorrow will transcend the jukebox, and remember that “soundtrack of your life” concept. This means new opportunities for podcasters, personalities, local content, and most importantly curation.

The ability to pick songs is now an algorithm. The Internet radio services of tomorrow have to show me how that content matters, if they want to matter.

We’ll have much more data and the implications of that data on April 10th, when Edison and Arbitron present The Infinite Dial 2012. Register today!