According to a mobile phone survey by Synovate, nearly 50% of Americans sleep with their cell phone close by…Three-fourths of survey respondents – including 82% of Americans – never leave home without their phone, and 36% of people across the world (42% of Americans) say they ‘cannot live without’ it….15% have flirted with someone other than their partner, led by the Brits (26%) and Russians (24%); less than 16% of Americans say they have done this…uh huh, just the ex-mayor of Detroit…and – here’s another shocker: Only 4% of Americans report breaking up by cell phone.

Parents have a lot to learn when it comes to their children’s behaviors online, the research found. In addition to significantly underestimating the amount of time their teens spend checking in on social networking sites, nearly half of parents (49%) say their child was age 13 or older before starting unsupervised surfing. This compares with just 14% of teens who say they actually waited this long.

Quoted in Marketing Charts, a study by Common Sense Media found that the parents of teens greatly underestimate their teens’ involvement with social networks.

Some teens also are attempting to keep their social networking businesses secret from their parents. 12% of teens with Facebook or MySpace pages say their parents don’t know about the account, 28% have shared information they would not normally share in public (16%of parents think their children have) and 13% have posted naked or semi-naked images of themselves (only 2% of parents think their children have).