Texting On the Rise In the US

frontwave links to this stat-laden overview of trends in text-messaging among Americans, citing a few of its findings: "The average teen (even including teens without cell phones) sends and receives five times more text messages a day than a typical adult. A teen typically sends or receives 50 text messages a day, while the average adult sends or receives 10. Fully 31% of teens send more than 100 texts a day and 15% send more than 200 a day, while just 8% and 5% of adults send that many, respectively."

Comments

Re:Progress

[ConfusedVorlon]

It's a much less intrusive form of communication. I can send you a small bit of info (e.g. meet at xxx at y) without interrupting whatever you are doing at the moment.

A phone call generally takes me 30-60 seconds, plus some waiting for the call to connect. A text is much faster (and can be sent to multiple recipients)

It's much more discreet for the sender (can send text from meeting/class/dinner)

It is a lot like email - but generally more available on phones, and with approximately real-time delivery to the recipient's attention. By comparison, a lot of people might not check their email for hours (or even days) at a time.

For a lot of plans, it is also a lot cheaper than voice calling. (in the uk at least, lots of pretty cheap plans come with effectively unlimited texting)