A phone call on Mother's Day is still popular. Photo / Thinkstock
A phone call on Mother's Day is still popular. Photo / Thinkstock
Facebook fails to match the intimacy of a Mother's Day message
Kiwis will revert to the old-fashioned method of picking up the phone to get in touch with mum tomorrow.
More people telephone to wish mum a happy Mother's Day compared with typical Sunday calling despite new technologies such as text, voice and video messaging via Skype or using Facebook becoming increasingly popular ways of communicating.
Last Mother's Day Vodafone customers chatted for nearly 1 million more minutes on their mobile phones - a 12.05 per cent increase - while Telecom's talk time was up 20 per cent and 2degrees saw a 22 per cent rise compared with the preceding Sunday. Meanwhile, there was no significant change in 3G data usage on any of the three networks.
Vodafone consumer director Matt Williams said Mother's Day bucked the general trend of data usage being on the rise. "The increase in calls and dip in 3G data usage highlights that on this day of the year we favour a chat with mum over posting a message to her Facebook wall."
2degrees also found significantly more women were talking on their mobile phones on Mother's Day than men. Telecom spokeswoman Lucy Fullarton said there was a 60 per cent increase in text messages to and from New Zealand on Mother's Day 2013 compared with the Sunday before.
"What that shows is if your mum is overseas so you're an immigrant and texting mum, text is quite a good way to have that immediate contact with her. Again, slightly different from email as she might not see that straight away or she's less likely to be carrying a computer around or accessing her emails non-stop, but if she's got her phone with her she will get the text message."
Mother's Day was the third busiest day for calls from mobile phones, following New Year's Eve and Christmas Day, according to Vodafone.
AUT senior lecturer in the School of Language and Culture, Dr Philippa Smith, said the data highlighted the importance of verbal communication on an occasion like Mother's Day.
"I think that's more of a realisation that in something that's quite personal and intimate the sound of somebody's voice has more emotion and sentiment than you would get from a text. Texting is a form of communication that is brilliant and fast but what texting lacks is sometimes getting across the proper meaning."
However, Skype and Facebook disagreed that online media was neglected by users on Mother's Day and, while they did not provide data specific to New Zealand, reported high traffic volumes last Mother's Day.
Skype senior communications manager Nicol Addison said May 12 last year was the biggest usage day in the year for the Americas region.
A Facebook spokeswoman for Australia and New Zealand said 1.25 photos were posted on Facebook last Mother's Day for every photo posted on any May Sunday in 2013 and there was a lot of talk about the celebration for the three days before until the day after.
FaceTime helps grandparents celebrate too
Maggie Robson, Eben and 'granny iPad' celebrate Mother's Day even though it's not the time for it in Britain. Photo / Christine Cornege
Maggie Robson's mother always gets a nice surprise when her daughter hops on FaceTime to wish her happy Mother's Day from New Zealand.
Because Mother's Day in Britain is in March, the mother-of-two said her mum never knew when she would appear in their Gloucester shire living room via the iPad with her two young children.
Mrs Robson said she chose to use FaceTime, a video call app, because it was as close as she could get to seeing her mother in person without shelling out thousands of dollars on a flight.
It is also easy technology for her parents to use, she said.
Since she emigrated to Hamilton 10 years ago, she has kept in regular contact with her parents on the telephone.
However, they started using FaceTime on the iPad about one year ago when she realised they were missing out on seeing their two-year-old grandson Eben grow up.
