Girls ages 12-17 are more likely than boys to use any kind of phone for voice calling.  More than a third (36%) of girls say that they use a landline phone daily, compared with 27% of boys. Similarly, 55% of girls with cell phones talk daily on their cell phone, while 47% of cell phone-owning boys report the same.

The older the teen, the more likely she uses her phone frequently. Older teens use them to talk to friends on a daily basis; younger teens tend to use mobile phones to call pals a few times or less per week. More than seven in ten 17-year-olds with phones talk to friends on their cell phones daily, while just 28% of 12-year-olds with phones say the same. A large percentage of phone-owning younger teens ages 12-14 say that they talk to friends at least once a week – 18% of those ages 12-14  report weekly cell phone use, while 10% of  those ages 15-17 do.

Landline phones do not show these differences in frequency of use by age – older and younger teens are just about as likely to talk every day. If anything, landline phone use shows a slight increase during the mid-teen years (ages 14-16) and then drops off again as teens near the end of high school. Face to face conversations outside of school rise modestly with age, from 22% of 12 year olds having them daily to 38% of 17 year-olds reporting daily face-to-face interactions outside of school.  Nevertheless, this increase by age pales in comparison to the growth in daily mobile phone conversations from age 12-17 among cell phone users.