Channel-Specific Daily Patterns in Mobile Phone Communication

TL;DR

This study reveals individual-specific, persistent daily communication patterns in mobile phone usage, highlighting differences between calls and texts, gender influences, and the role of social ties over 18 months.

Contribution

It uncovers detailed, individual-level daily communication patterns and differences between communication channels, genders, and social ties, providing new insights into human communication rhythms.

Findings

Individuals have unique, persistent daily communication patterns.

Calls and texts serve different communication roles, especially in evenings.

Gender and social tie type influence communication timing and patterns.

Abstract

Humans follow circadian rhythms, visible in their activity levels as well as physiological and psychological factors. Such rhythms are also visible in electronic communication records, where the aggregated activity levels of e.g. mobile telephone calls or Wikipedia edits are known to follow their own daily patterns. Here, we study the daily communication patterns of 24 individuals over 18 months, and show that each individual has a different, persistent communication pattern. These patterns may differ for calls and text messages, which points towards calls and texts serving a different role in communication. For both calls and texts, evenings play a special role. There are also differences in the daily patterns of males and females both for calls and texts, both in how they communicate with individuals of the same gender vs. opposite gender, and also in how communication is allocated at social ties of different nature (kin ties vs. non-kin ties). Taken together, our results show that there is an unexpected richness to the daily communication patterns, from different types of ties being activated at different times of day to different roles of communication channels and gender differences.