Amanda Kimbrough, a 21-year-old UA psychology major, presented a pool of 381 subjects with a 26-item survey. The survey asked the participants to name their preferred piece of tech for keeping in touch, as well as how often they use it.

The 114 men who participated largely could not pick a preferred client from a list including text messaging, phone calls, video calls and social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

But the vast majority of the 267 women who participated chose text messaging as their preferred method of communicating, with social networks a close second.

Kimbrough said these are surprising results because the majority of similar studies, most of them conducted around the turn of the century, found that women hardly used technology at all. In fact, a 2000 study done at Georgia Tech found that 95 percent of Internet users were men.

Another study conducted in 2002 by UA assistant psychology professor Rosanna Guadagno found that women had not yet embraced text-based communication like email.

However, Kimbrough said Facebook changed all of that. She said when the social network began allowing those outside of colleges to sign up in 2007, more and more women began to get the hang of and enjoy text-based communication.

“It’s a complete 180 (degrees) from 10 years ago,” Kimbrough said. “When they started getting on Facebook and chatting with one another there, women just became a lot more comfortable with that form of communication over phone conversations.”

Kimbrough and Guadagno, who mentored Kimbrough through the research, said that older women, those 55 and older, are the quickest growing sector adopting text-based communication.

“More and more of them are getting on Facebook because they’re trying to keep up with their kids and grandkids,” Kimbrough said.

“And then they meet up with old friends from high school and that sucks them in even further,” Guadagno said.

Kimbrough and Guadagno said the adoption of text-based communication fits with social psychology’s understanding of women as the gender that looks at maintaining relationships as a responsibility.

Guadagno and UA grad student Nicole Muscanell published a separate study this year that found that women use Facebook to maintain their existing relationships with people, while men use the site to increase their existing social network.

While women are talking with their friends and family on a near constant basis, Guadagno said men are using Facebook to find jobs, to find dates and meet new people.

Kimbrough said the reaction she saw to a separate study she did as a sophomore inspired this one on how men and women use technology.

“Everyone that I surveyed who mentioned being stressed for time talked about Facebook as if it were a responsibility rather than an elective,” she said.

Illustrative of the nature at which technology and social networks are growing in popularity, Kimbrough’s study began before Pinterest, the most recent “it” site, took off.

The site, where users simply post images to a virtual pinboard and can comment on each one, has gained notice recently has having amassed a user base composed almost entirely of women.

When asked why they thought women are embracing Pinterest, Kimbrough and Guadagno said it has to do with Facebook and Twitter not filling certain needs.

Guadagno said that as more and more older users embrace Facebook, the site becomes more and more “uncool” and thus younger users are driven away.

So why aren’t these younger women going to Twitter? Well, some are. But the vast majority who are going to Pinterest instead are doing so because Pinterest offers more of a conversation than Twitter, Kimbrough said.

“On Twitter a lot of the time, you don’t get a response,” she said. “Many times you put a tweet out there and you get nothing back. And men in general are OK with that. They feel like the people who needed to see that saw it and they move on.

“But women need confirmation. On Pinterest, you talk to your network of friends and they respond. You’re not just talking to the world in general like on Twitter.”

Kimbrough and Guadagno agreed that research findings like this indicate that the developers of social networks and smartphone apps need to include more women in the design process of these products.

“Men can have the best of intentions,” Kimbrough said. “But they’re only going to see what they think women want to see. Men value things differently in general from women.

“The average woman knows more about what women want than any man reading research. Women have a history of adapting technology designed by men to their needs and then using it much more often.

“We need more women involved in the design of future products.”