Communication Using Camera Phones Among Young Men and Women: Who Sends What to Whom?

Abstract

This study examined whether the gender of the sender and recipient would influence camera phone usage. 180 college and university students from the Midlands and North of England provided information on communication with friends and family, and on personal importance of image uses. A sub-sample of 130 provided further data on likelihood of sending different kinds of image and the content of recent images sent and received. Many gender similarities were found, together with evidence of the use of images to support heterosexual relationships. However, the results showed greater use of images of significant individuals by the women than among their male counterparts, among all-female dyads and to communicate with female recipients. Overall the results suggest that women use images more than men for relationship maintenance.

Text You Pictures: The Role of Group Belonging, Race Identity, Race, and Gender in Older Adolescents’ Mobile Phone Use

“…Gender was also a correlate of phone use for texting and phone camera use. To an extent, this finding reflects the results of a study about communication with friends and family conducted among United Kingdom (UK) university students (Colly et al 2010), on personal importance of camera phone pictures. The results showed the greater use of images by women than among men, among all-female dyads and to communicate with female recipients.…”

Sex(t) Talk: A Qualitative Analysis of Young Adults’ Negotiations of the Pleasures and Perils of Sexting

“…Colley et al 2010;Dir et al 2013;Drouin and Landgraff 2012;Drouin et al 2013;Klettke et al 2014;NCPTUP 2008;Samimi and Alderson 2014;Weisskirch and Delevi 2011;Yeung et al 2014) however some studies have highlighted that the behaviour is common across all types of relationships including intimate/committed, casual and cheating, as found by Drouin et al (2013). In terms of gender differences, females have been identified in some studies as more likely to send images or written messages (Associated Press/MTV 2009;Döring 2014;Englander 2012;Wysocki and Childers 2011), while males are more likely to receive sexual images or texts (AP/MTV 2009;Dir et al 2013;Gordon-Messer et al 2013).…”

“…Within the context of intimate relationships, sexting is often engaged in for the purposes of relationship maintenance (e.g. see Albury and Crawford 2012;Colley et al 2010;Lenhart 2009) or when partners are separated by distance (e.g. see Albury and Crawford 2012;Drouin et al 2013;Walker et al 2013).…”

Cell Phone Decision Making

“…Although this is a limitation, we do not believe it to be a fatal flaw due to emerging evidence that there are relatively few differences in the ways that boys and girls utilize cell phones. Some studies have found girls use their cell phones more often than boys (Lenhart, 2012), although this is not a consistent finding (Underwood, Rosen, More, Ehrenreich, & Gentsch, 2012), and aside from frequency, relatively few gender differences have emerged (Colley, Todd, White, & Turner-Moore, 2010; Lenhart, 2012). Nevertheless, the results of this study should not be viewed as representative of all adolescents, but rather as reflecting the perceptions of this sample.…”