The short version
We asked about 1,000 US smartphone users to choose between two of the most-used features on any phone: the ability to send texts, or the camera. You can only keep one. 67.6% would rather live without their phone’s camera and keep texting.
Living without your camera is inconvenient but survivable — you could buy a dedicated one, the way we all did before phones got good. Living without texting means losing your default line to nearly everyone you know.
Keep texting (ditch camera), by age
The preference strengthens with age — older respondents are the most committed to texting. The most interesting cell is the youngest: 32% of 18–24s would give up texting to keep their camera, the highest of any group, likely because so much of their messaging lives inside apps.
Keep texting (ditch camera), by gender
This is the one question in the series where women come out less text-attached than men — likely reflecting how much more they lean on the camera. On every communication-specific question, the pattern reverses.
We first concluded phone-use frequency doesn’t correlate with preferences. That’s true here — but on the “one channel for life” question a clean correlation does appear: the heaviest phone users choose texting far more often than the lightest (68% vs. 48%).
The bigger picture
This camera question is where our survey started — but it turned out to be the least surprising of the set. Across all five, the consistent finding is how fiercely Americans protect texting: they’d give it up less readily than alcohol, than phone calls, than video, than their camera.