Fifty-six percent of parents surveyed said they gave their children a smartphone for safety and security reasons, according to a study from location-based system Life360.

The Life360 study surveyed 500 of the company?s users and looked at the ways that moms use mobile. The study also predicts what the mobile landscape will look like in the future for families.

?Mobile keeps families safe, so it is a natural that moms want to see where their kids are on their smartphones,? said Tony Pham, vice president of marketing at Life360, San Francisco.

Life360 is an application for iPhone and Android devices that keeps tabs on families by using location-based services. Life360 claims that more than 5 million consumers use its apps.

Mobile moms
In the ?The smartphone: A must-have for every modern mom? study, the research found that moms are tied to their mobile devices.

When asked what it would take for moms to give up their smartphone, 28.7 percent of women said they would not give up their smartphone for a day even if they were paid.

Of the consumers surveyed, 15.5 percent said they would swap out their smartphone for a day if they received a new bag, shoes or clothes.

Staying in touch with family was a big factor in how moms used their handsets with 44 percent of women surveyed saying they checked in with their families one to five times a day via mobile.

Thirteen percent of women surveyed said they used their smartphones to check in on their family more than 10 times a day.

More than half of the women surveyed said they planned on buying a smartphone for a family member in the next 18 months.

In the future, 73.5 percent of moms surveyed said they expect to rely on their smartphones more in five years.

Mobile habits
The study also revealed some interesting statistics about how women interact with their smartphones.

More than 57 percent of moms said that all of their family members over the age of 13 will probably have a smartphone in the next year and a half.

More than 52 percent of moms surveyed said they used their smartphone within five minutes of waking up.

Seventy-eight percent of women said they used their mobile devices in the last ten to 15 minutes before going to bed.

Android devices accounted for three times the number of users than iPhone devices in the study.

The Android findings in the study point to a bigger mobile trend.

According to a recent study, Android app downloads recently overtook iOS apps (see story).

?Parents and moms are more focused on practicality, so when talking about soccer moms, Android is more popular because of price and availability,? said Chris Hulls, cofounder/CEO of Life360, San Francisco.

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York