By IANS
Sydney : As a gadget, it has been around only a decade or so, but mobile phones have become seamlessly integrated with family life, confirms a new survey.
Of all the calls monitored during the three-year survey by Australian researchers, an overwhelming number were for contacting family (49 percent) and friends (26 percent).
Only about 12 percent of the calls were work-related.
The remainder of the calls were to service providers or to pick up messages from voice mail (less than 15 percent).
Out of the bulk of calls to family members, most were made to spouses (18 percent), while women were disproportionately likely to phone their children (13 percent), parents (11 percent) and extended family (12 percent).
Employed men devoted 25 percent of their calls to work-related purposes while for employed women the number was 14 percent, the survey found.
Family (47 percent) and friends (43 percent) were by far the most common recipients of text messages. This finding is overwhelmingly true for both males and females.
Within families, texting between spouses (19 percent) constituted the highest volume of text messages and the employed were more likely to text their spouses.
About 26 percent of people sent four or more text messages on workdays; it increased to one in three people on non-work days.
The project was undertaken jointly by the Australian National University, the University of New England and the University of New South Wales.