There are several reasons why men and women take a different approach to profile photos, an expert has said.
It comes after one journalist did a deep dive into her WhatsApp contacts and found a strange distinction.
Men generally had just a photo of just themselves - or none at all - whereas women had a photo of family and friends around them.
Life coach and author Mark Fennell told Lunchtime Live there a number of factors at play.
"Men would generally, statistically, have just the photo of themselves," he said.
"It's across the board - it's not just in the professional setting, it's the WhatsApp with friends, their Facebook group and so forth.
"Basically it can be a couple of things and it's hard to say it's just all one thing.
"Men are less emotionally aware generally - not all men - but generally [men] have a lower emotional intelligence."
"What that means is, 'This is me, I'm not giving you my backstory, I'm not telling you who I'm dating or my family'.
"Generally speaking men and try and put out a perception of, 'This is me professional' or otherwise this is it - they don't think beyond that."
'Women try portray a story'
Mr Fennell said woman generally want to project a different story.
"A female generally speaking will put forward an image of a family or the social seed - the backstory to who she is," he said.
"A study was actually done on this that [showed] women try and portray more of a story of, 'This is who I am and this is what I stand for'".
Mr Fennell said there can also be narcissistic reasons behind a photo choice.
"There's also men who have narcissistic traits [and] would put a photo of themselves because they are more self-absorbed," he said.
"Statistically, there are more narcissistic traits amongst males than females - so there's also that side to it as well".
'Men are more confident'
Mr Fennell said women sometimes don't want to be at the centre of the photo.
"Sometimes women will put photos of them and their family because they don't won't be the sole attention in that image," he said.
"Men struggle a lot less with that because men are generally more confident in an image than a female.
"When you start to unbox it you start to see many different reasons why this behaviour exists".
He said those who use photos of pets or other images as their profile picture "are generally people who don't like being in the public [eye] or like any attention at all.
"The reason they're doing that is they don't want to be seen".
A woman using a smartphone. Image: NicoElNino / AlamyJournalist Áilín Quinlan noticed the difference when she went through her WhatsApp contacts.
"What prompted me to notice this was simply [that] I got a number of messages, quite unrelated, from male acquantances and then several female friends of mine also WhatsApped me," she said.
"I just happened to notice that that male WhatsApp profiles - who carried a photohraph - all had pictures of themselves on their own or of a pet.
"When I looked at the female profiles they all had pictures of themselves with children, family or friends."
Ms Quinn added that it was "very rare" to find a woman who posted a picture of herself.
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