• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, July 1, 2011

There are a lot of parents out there -- around 155 million, according to the U.S. Census, including about 85 million mothers and 70 million fathers, of whom about 80 million are also grandparents --  and it seems reasonable to assume a good number of these parental units own iPhones, which sold a total 40 million units in the U.S. from 2007-2010. Now new research shows that parents who own iPhones tend to be significantly more social than parents without.

Among parents who own iPhones, 13% have over 500 Facebook friends, according to a survey of 1,000 parents by Retrevo, compared to 8% for the parental population at large. Conversely, iPhone-owning parents were less likely to have a small number of Facebook friends (less than 50)  -- 5% of the iPhone-owning subgroup, compared to 20% for the parental population at large. 55% of iPhone parents reported having 50-250 Facebook friends, and 19% reported have 250-500 friends, compared to 38% and 15% of all parents, respectively.

Of course heavy social media usage is not without its drawbacks (think: addictive behaviors) and Retrevo found that it seems to be eating into what little free time parents once had: 11% of parents who own iPhones said they have given up activities they enjoy because they spend so much time on Facebook or Twitter. By the same token, social media is also a useful tool for conducting parental surveillance, with 20% of iPhone-owning parents saying they have used Facebook to "learn more about their children's dates" -- compared to 12% of the population overall and just 8% of Android-owning parents.

Interestingly, Android-owning parents tended to skew more towards the general population than their iPhone-owning peers, when it comes to online socializing, although there were some instances where they were closer to the iPhone set. 18% of iPhone parents reported having fewer than 50 friends, 40% reported having 50-250 friends, 19% reported having 250-500, and 10% reported having more than 500.