Study Shows That Teens Are Texting Every Ten Minutes
On average teenagers are sending and receiving text messages every ten minutes of every day of every waking hour of the year. This is according to a study released by the research company Nielsen.
Nielsen took and analyzed data from over 60k United States mobile phone service subscribers from the months of:
- April
- May
- June
What they found is that on average teenagers are sending or receiving almost 3,400 texts every month. This figure is up 8% from the previous year’s figure. Those in the 18-24 year old bracket came in at a very distant second with exchanges of just a little over 1,600 texts per month. This corresponds to a “meager” three texts every hour.
There were also some very interesting discrepancies when it came to gender as well.
- Boys are only sending or receiving a little over 2,500 texts per month on average
- while girls are over 4,000 per month.
In addition to texting the use of mobile data in the past year has quadrupled in usage with teens, this coming with more use of social networking and games on mobile devices.
Due to fast transmission times and the basic ease of use, text messaging is the core reason hat 43% of all teenagers’ state that they want to get a mobile phone. This is in stark contrast to just two years prior. Two years ago the primary reason teenagers stated they wanted to get a mobile phone for safety reasons.
The QWERTY raised keyboard, in opposition to the touch-screen, according to Nielsen, is the very first thing that teenagers are looking for when choosing a mobile phone.
The survey wasn’t just about teenagers. They also surveyed mobile phone users over all of the different demographics and age groups. Overall, Nielsen made the discovery that actual talking on mobile phones has gone down. Adults are making or receiving 188 phone calls per month on average on their mobile phone during the 2010 period. This amount is down 25% from the same period simply just three years ago. The average talking minutes fell down 5% through the 2009 period through those in the 18-24 year old age group which is a 17% decline.
Even adults have increased their texting. Even those in the 45-54 age groups were sending or receiving over 300 text messages per month in Q2 of 2010. This is up 75% from just the year prior.
A big part of the mobile communication texting trend is due to
Heavy economic influence on Cell Usage
Text messaging takes up far less bandwidth than making a phone call and it also costs far less. Whites are sending around 566 texts a month while Hispanics and African Americans are sending 767 and 780 texts per month. This accounts for the difference in texting economics in comparison to voice.
Popularity in social media is also a very heavy driving factor in texting with adults. The sites like Facebook and Twitter are massively increasing the sheer texting volume. Most of the devoted Facebook and Twitter users are creating settings that will alert them through a text every time they get a message or tweet directed to them.
The United States at one point lagged behind Europe and Asia in terms of texting habit adoption. Should the study from Nielsen be any evidence though, the rising American generation of expert teenage texting should be able to close any future gaps.
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Tags: Cell phone plans, SMS, texting