Text messaging picks up among U.S. teens
By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 22 April 2010, 21:58 IST   |    2 Comments
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Text messaging picks up among U.S. teens
Washington: Daily text messaging among American teens has shot up in the past 18 months from 38 percent of teens texting friends daily in February of 2008, to 54 percent of teens texting daily in September 2009. In fact, text messaging has become the most frequent way that teens reach their friends, surpassing face-to-face meetings, email, instant messaging and voice calling as a daily communications tool. However, cell phone calling is still the preferred mode that teens use to connect with their parents, reports a new survey done by Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. The survey also says that boys typically send and receive 30 texts a day; girls typically send and receive 80 messages per day. Older girls who text are the most active, with 14-17 year-old girls typically sending 100 or more messages a day or more than 3,000 texts a month. While many teens are avid texters, a notable minority are not. One-fifth of teen texters (22 percent) send and receive just 1-10 texts a day or 30-300 a month. "The widespread availability of unlimited texting plans has transformed communication patterns of American teens, many of whom now conduct substantial portions of their daily conversations with their friends via texting," said Amanda Lenhart, Senior Researcher at the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project and a co-author on the report. "But what's important to remember here is that this is a shift in the location and style of teens' communication with friends, not necessarily a radical change or expansion of it." The survey found that 75 percent of those ages 12-17 now have cell phones, up from 45 percent in 2004. These cell users place calls on their phones much less often than dashing off texts. Teens typically make about five calls per day on the cells. But they still prefer to deal with their parents by calling them, rather than texting them. "These findings show that in a very short time cell phones have moved from being a fancy toy in a few teens' lives to favored communications hubs for most teens that are vitally important to nourishing their ties to friends and coordinating complicated family lives," said Rich Ling, co-author of the report and a professor at the IT University of Copenhagen and affiliated with the University of Michigan. "The changes in communications patterns are not smooth, though, because teens' use of cell phones disrupt traditional social relations and social expectations."

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