BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Dec. 21 (UPI) -- U.S. sociologists say there's a gender divide in the extent of cellphone feature use among children.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham research team says children of both genders make calls and use text messaging -- with girls averaging 2 hours on the cellphone each day and boys averaging about 1.8 hours per day.
However, boys are more likely than girls to use the multimedia potential of the phones, such as playing games, sharing pictures and videos, listening to music and sending e-mails.
"It has a lot to do with gender socialization," researcher Shelia Cotten says in a statement.
Boys tend to see and use the cell phone as a gadget while girls are more likely to treat the phone as a contact list, Cotten says.
Cotten advises parents planning to get their child a cellphone to focus first on age and maturity level.
"Parents need to have a good conversation with their child about the cellphone because it's much harder to control children's cellphone activities unless they set rules or place parental controls on the phones," Cotten says.
The findings are published in New Media & Society.
