Early Results Are In!
What are Australians' smartphone habits?
What are our smartphone habits? It depends quite a bit your individual characteristics-that is, your gender, where you live (urban vs. rural), and as we'll show in future installments, your generation!
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Here are some interesting tidbits in the meantime, from over 14,000 respondents across Australia, ages 18-90. Do feel free to contact us with suggestions for analyses you'd like to see from these data, or comments on early results.
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We are also continuing to grow our database of helpful informants on ModernLife in Australia-please join us if you'd like to continue to be a part of our future studies.
Females vs. Males
What are our smartphone habits? It part, it depends on your identified gender. An early picture of these trends are shown below. Looking at patterns within these data, women are more likely to endorse using their smartphones to avoid looking awkward in social settings. Interesting-women are also more likely to endorse using their phones to help settle an argument! That said, men are more likely to use their phone in one "interesting" setting, in particular, the toilet.
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Importantly, these data don't indicate gender differences in terms of feeling that friends may be devoting less attention during important conversations-nearly 40% of women and men agree this happens when friends are distracted with their smartphones!
Stay tuned for more gender differences from these data!
Urban vs. Rural
What are our smartphone habits? It also depends on where you live. We classified over 14,000 participants from ABC's Biggest Smartphone Survey, in terms of their post-codes, and categorized them as living in either rural or urban Australia. A small slice of these data are shown below. If you live in an urban area, you are more likely to use your smartphone to avoid boredom, and more likely to "need" to check your phone in the morning. Likewise, if you live in an urban are, you are more likely to deploy your device to avoid looking awkward in social settings. Urbanites also admit to having "phubbed," that is, smartphone snubbed others instead of engaging in conversation.
