Would You Rather Live Without Texting or Your Phone’s Camera?

We surveyed 1,000 smartphone users across the US to find out if they would rather live without texting or their phone's camera. Here are the results.

Lance Beaudry wrote this article. Published on Jul 31, 2024.

would you rather give up your phone's camera or texting

Sending and receiving text messages and the convenience of always having a high-end camera in your pocket are two of the most popular features that modern mobile devices provide us. Many of us send texts and use our phone’s camera daily. Going even one day without using one of them would be strange and even hard to do if you challenged the right person to it.

I for one couldn’t go a day without either very easily. I have two young kids so it’s important to have a camera ready to capture the precious and hilarious moments. Going without text messaging would be just as hard since it’s my preferred method of communication with friends and family.

For reasons like this, we decided to pin the two popular features of mobile devices against each other.

Read on to see the results and breakdowns by age and gender.

would you rather give up your smart phone's camera or texting results by age

There’s not much of a contest. The majority of people would rather live without their phone’s camera. Interestingly, the number of people who prefer to text increases with age, except for 25-34-year-olds.

These numbers may not come as a surprise to many readers. Living without your phone’s camera wouldn’t be impossible. You could get a dedicated digital camera, like we had to before smart phones had great cameras. For some, that inconvenience seems to be not worth it.

When you consider the fact that 32% of 18-24 year-olds would rather live without texting and keep their phone’s camera, it’s a little more surprising. I would have thought that the younger generations would be far more inclined to keep the ability to text over using their phone’s camera. However, many 18-24 year-olds are messaging many of their family and friends via direct messages on platforms like Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

would you rather give up your smart phone's camera or texting results by gender

When it comes to breaking down the answer to this question via gender, more women are willing to live without texting than men are. From my personal experience, I do see more of the women in my life take photos on their phones than the men, so that tracks.

would you rather give up your smart phone's camera or texting results by phone usage

Finally, we decided to compare the results of this question to how long survey participants selected they go on an average day between checking their phone. We were hoping there might be a correlation between how often you check your phone and whether you prefer to give up texting or your phone’s camera. The statistics are interesting, but not convincing enough to say that “phone addicts” are more likely to give up one over the other.

Survey Data Quality

This survey was paid for and conducted by TextSpot. TextSpot used a third-party survey service to collect responses (view their data quality statement). All participants are located in the United States.

Full Infographic:

would you rather give up texting or your phone's camera infographic