A study done in October 2012 at Rice University shows how genders differ when it comes to the use of emoticons.
The study was performed over a six-month period in which students at Rice University received free iPhones and were tracked based on their usage of emoticons.
Results showed that females tended to use emoticons twice as often as males and that they used a larger variety of them. For example, while men may use a smiley face every once in a while, women were more likely to use a smiley face, a frowny face, etc. on a regular basis.
Phil Kortum, a psychology assistant at Rice University points out:
"There's some social science research that suggests that women are generally more emotionally expressive than men. So the finding that women use more emoticons is not horribly surprising."
While the results may not be surprising, it is important to be aware of the sampling of this research before making larger assumptions. This research was conducted among college students. The way that younger, educated demographics perform on smartphones may be very different from the way in which an older demographic or a group of young people who have not received a higher education may perform on smartphones.