Phone Fatale: New research on the Irish women’s love affair with their Smartphone
EVOKE.ie (IAB Ireland members) recently commissioned Amarach Research to conduct a study on Irish Women’s Smartphone use.
See below for an early sneakpeek at the findings, the full research report will be released in the coming weeks:
- 71% of female 25-34 year olds are buying clothes through their mobile.
- 26% of singles have used dating apps like Tinder. Dating apps are most popular not amongst the young 18-24s as one might suspect but actually 25-34 year olds.
- 40% have snooped on their partner’s phone. And this rises to 46% amongst those women with children.
- 70% of mothers surveyed give their phones to their kids to entertain them or to keep them quiet.
- 73% of them have their phone with them at all times at home – not in another room, in a bag or on a table. And 10% keep their phone under the bed at night.
- 61% are happy enough to use their phones in the middle of a date and 77% in bed. 25% admit that their mobile gets in the way of being intimate with their partners.
- 24% post selfies. Interestingly, women who posted selfies were 5 times more likely to say that their mobile didn’t help them feel happy.
- 47% of women use messaging apps like WhatsApp/Viber daily and 88% are using them in general.
- A massive 99% use their phones for taking pictures and 38% do this daily.
- 38% of women are using Snapchat and 42% Instagram and 41% Pinterest – proving that advertisers really need to start thinking outside the Facebook box, when it comes to social media.
- Women prefer phone calls for immediate family but WhatsApp/Viber for friends – even their besties. 82% of women use group chats on WhatsApp and 12% have groups with over 20 people in them!
- 32% admit to still using their mobile phones while driving – despite it being illegal and 72% of women admit to using their phones at the dinner table.
- 47% says it effects them getting to sleep.
- 27% have ‘good friends’ online who they’ve never met in real life.
Rachel Ray from EVOKE.ie commented the following the research “As a website whose audience is 95% female and 95% mobile traffic, it’s important for us at EVOKE.ie to understand women’s relationship with their mobile phones. It’s clear from the research that this relationship is a complex – even emotional one. It’s a relationship that’s full of contradictions – we value our own privacy, yet snoop on our partners phones. We try to ‘detox’ from them, but keep them under our pillows at night. We let them interrupt our sex lives, but are happy to use our phones in bed…
On the whole, we found that mobile phones are helping women make more connections and have more immediate contact with individuals and groups… but they are also having a negative impact on face-to-face time and even voice-to-voice. This isn’t exactly the fault of the technology – as humans are hard wired to seek as many social connections with as much control as possible. Texting, social, email and services like Whatsapp offer us the alluring possibility of message control and self-editing – the ability to communicate the ‘ideal self’ – whether it’s in a formal email or the perfect selfie.
In this sense, for good and for bad, our mobile phone isn’t the drug, it’s the enabler. Human relationships from work to home are messy, complicated things. We try to ‘tidy’ and control them with our phones. They are our social limbs and our ‘always on’ connection to every other person in the world. It’s hard to think of any other invention that is or has changed who we are and how we behave.’
If you would like to know more about the research and get insights into different audience and media specific related insights, please email Research@EVOKE.ie for more details.
