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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."
I receive 10 a month.
I always wondered why the Americans adopted SMS sooooo later than European
Pumbaa! I don't wonder; I know.
We're glad you could join us in blindly walking into lamp posts while stumbling and texting down the street.
... the impact this has on their verbal language skills.
really? this is news?
I live in europe and I and most of the people I knew texted like that.
Teenagers like to talk, gossipe and plan meeting up.
It's what they do.
In 1992, I was the first teen at school to carry a palmtop around in all my lessons (geek!), a Psion Series 3a.
In 1995, I joined the ham radio club at school.
In 1998, I first browsed the 'net using a mobile from a tethered computer in McDonalds in London.
In 1999, I bought the Motorola Timeport, the first triband WAP 'phone.
I've gone through Palm PDAs, Librettos, iPaqs, etc. (Never a Newton, though.)
Anyway I guess my point is that I've had fun with some early-ish little boxes.
Today I send on average about 0.1 texts per day, and hate them. Seriously, 50 a day, what the fuck? Am I alone in feeling this?
The report from which the numbers are derived can be found here
It's worth having a read of, there's some rather fascinating demographic info in there that could really make for an interesting chat. Oh, and the report shows that 24% of teens send under 10 messages a day, girls more than boys, older more than younger, generally the same across racial and economic groupings.
And this is surprising because...? I don't understand why it amazes anyone that kids text more than adults. Even without taking into account that kids embrace technology more than (some) adults, we have many reasons for the "findings" of the study:
1) Kids have more spare time.
2) Kids spend their time communicating with their friends.
3) In classes, texting is the only possible way to communicate with others without the teacher catching on to you (electively replacing the secret notes of our generation)
Probably many more reasons, but I don't feel like trying too hard thinking about them. I'll SMS you when I figured out some more.
Whenever in an argument, remember this.
100 per day... Imagine 14 hours in a day being awake, that is 7 per hour.
I wouldn't have time to do other things anymore!
bash$
I take it "adults" here is defined as 18-30? With everyone older going into the "Eww, gross!" category.
There's just no way that all adults average out to 10 messages a day.
sic transit gloria mundi
that addicted to something.
Then again, I use IRC. But, as long as something isn't controlling your life, no harm I guess.
Before I went to Asia, I never sent a text message in my life. When I got back after my first stay, I started sending text messages to friends and such. Many of them had never received one before, and wondered why their phone was making that strange sound. People would just rather call you and say what they want to say instead of taking all the time to write out a text. I agree...to a point.
What's good about texts? Well, they're great when communicating with people who speak English as a second or third language. They have time to think about what they're going to say, and they have time to decipher what you say. Of course, mobile slang is extremely difficult for them. The advantages with native English speakers? You have time to reply at your leisure, and a record is kept of all conversations. If the recipient's phone is off, the network will store the message and deliver it when power is restored or when they pay their bill. Er...that's all I can think of.
Negatives about texts? The laborious nature of texting means that the English language is horribly mangled in order to fit. The only real solution is a keyboard...T9 is a kludge and letter-by-letter texting is just too much work. It condenses thoughts into tiny pieces to fit inside 140 characters. Text messaging is horribly expensive for its cost.
Frankly, I think a lot of people just send texts in order to be able to play with their phones. It's fun when you're stuck on a bus and bored, you can talk to six friends at once. But to get some work done or exchange real information, it's easier just to call. The bandwidth of voice is so much greater than that of text messaging. Heck, I even notice this with instant messaging (something else I never bothered with before Asia), it takes 40 minutes to have a conversation when the same phone call would have taken 5 minutes. People in my office will sit at their desks and send MSN to each other instead of talking. It's weird...a quiet office with no sound but clattering keyboards.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Why would I actually choose to use some chicklets-keyboard, or way overly-sensitive virtual keyboard, when I can just _call_? I mean, it's a PHONE, gawddamnit!
Signed, Captain Curmudgeon Old Fart
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
IN LATE BREAKING NEWS: Kids with all the time in the world spend it texting their friends! Adults on the other hand, well, they do more productive things; like less texting.
For me in the UK I would prob say this happened around the year 2000 if not before. So this prob means litres, kilograms, meters and ISO paper is just around the corner for the USA soon then :-)
SMS is not a replacement of calls, it's complementary. Calls are intrusive, require full, unbroken attention, and are obtrusive to people around.
Calls are a valid method to pass urgent important message and the acknowledgment of receiving it is essential, or to ask an urgent short question. They are good when you want to conduct a longer conversation and both parties are not occupied.
Text messages are good for passing an announcement that doesn't require immediate attention or confirmation, to ask a question that may require research, to pass data that should be retained (written down) like addresses, directions, phone numbers (no, mom, don't dictate this to me, just disconnect and text me that address) and for a discrete conversation when normal phone call would be disruptive to others around.
You don't text strangers requiring answer - it's rude when they have to pay to answer unsolicited question.
You don't call when you suspect the other person is busy. You may text them to call (or ring) you when they have free time to call instead.
You may send text to remind about something.
You do not depend on SMS as the only channel with important messages. You only use them when calling fails, and then still try to reach the other party by means that let them acknowledge receiving the message.
SMS is no longer about being cheap. It's an essential element of the culture of communication.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
What is this? Was this study commissioned by the "Get Off My Lawn Association" or is the US mobile telecom industry really that far behind the rest of the world? This news really is a decade old; I can recall similar numbers coming out in Ireland and the UK back in 2000.
Despite the absurdity of US telecoms pricing schemes, I still can't believe that texting is still some kind of novel phenomena in the US at this late stage. There are kids in deepest Africa, darkest Peru and the wilds of Connemara who know what a text message is by now. The US baby boomers can't possibly still be ignorant of it can they?
May the Maths Be with you!
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)
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
Low-latency asynchronous communication has different benefits to low-latency synchronous communication.
For example if you are trying to organise something with a bunch of people then it is easier firing texts between each other than making a series of phone-calls.
But is this really news? When I was teen in the late 90s this was equally true. If anything my generation use texts less because we can afford nice phones that have IM clients...
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
of course they can. they can send/recv 0 texts a day. just add that with the rest, and you have yourself an average. tada!
weinersmith
1. You can read faster than a good portion of people can speak.
2. No one gets to know what you are conversing over. (teens especially love this)
3. No one has to hear about what you are discussing. (I'm talking to you Mr. really loud cell phone talker guy)
4. If you have a crappy memory it is there for retrieval instead of trying to recall what was discussed.
I hate texting but I ask my significant other to text me the grocery list so other people at work/bus/train don't have to hear/know that I need to pick up some rich chocolaty ovaltine.
open source sub sim. I might start coding again for this. http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/contribute/
15 seconds per message is a lot of time. Some of my friends pick up their texting habits from their younger siblings still in college (which I'm sure share similar habits of high schoolers). At least 20% of their texts are "sup" "u there?" "hi" "nm (not much)" "where r u" and of course... "im bored".
One of my friends' (she's 26) text messages take 10-15 seconds to decipher because she only spells phonetically, and cuts out most vowels, which makes most words 2-4 chars long.
Q.E.D. most messages take 3 seconds to read, respond, and send. 1000 text messages at 3 seconds each is only 50 minutes a day, and I once worked with someone in college who could prove she sent/received 1000 text messages (combined) a day, so it does exist, and it doesn't seem to affect their ability to work student jobs.
Also, when you're unemployed (a student) you tend to have a lot of down time on your hands if you're trapped at home and don't plan on doing your homework anyways.
moox. for a new generation.
It's fire and forget. You don't have the risk of getting sucked into a conversation. It doesn't require that the recieving party be present at the time of sending. It's usually faster to receive than a voicemail.
For example: while snowboarding, if separated, my friends and I usually text each other to say what area/bar we are going to. Service is spotty on the mountain, but sooner or later they go into a spot where the message shows up. Vm doesn't always come through in these conditions, and who wants to pull off hats and goggles when it only takes 3 or four words to get the message across.
I would think Internet based communications are replacing SMS, but even in my example SMS seems to work better as all you need is a gsm signal. Often the Internet doesn't work well when you have a really weak edge signal.
Hell, I sometimes go 2 or 3 weeks without even turning my phone ON. I don't think my send and receive together add up to 10 a YEAR.
'Course, there's essentially zero coverage at my house. Texts CAN get through there, but it takes up to 2 or 3 hours by my tests.
Honestly, I hope they find some better way for teens (or anyone, really) to send small bits of text to others with mobile devices in the near future.... I'm thinking we need some kind of stripped-down EEG device for mobile phones...
The first thought that jumped into my head was that if your message is too complex to compose on a keypad why not just call the person? Old guys love to joke about this, but lots of people forget that their phones can actually make phone calls. At worst they don't pick up and you leave a voicemail.
EEG enabled phones would be awesome for a number of reasons though. When you consider the possibility of implanted cell phone components you pretty much have the ultimate hands free device. I'm just no so sure I would want to give my phone access to my thoughts though. I'm an Android user, and as convenient as it is to have Google indexing my e-mails, voicemails, and GPS location I don't know how comfortable I would be with them indexing my brain.
you don't buy many groceries at one time do you? How many items can you list in 140 characters?
I can beat that. Not counting automated monitoring squawks, I receive less than 1 per month from humans. I give thanks for this regularly. While the ability to communicate in media other than voice, from just about anywhere has it's merits, it is in most case a barrier to effective communication. No one can type as fast as they can talk, so when you factor in the time it takes for the sender to actually type, actually getting the message takes far longer than just reading it. The only real benefit of text is that, as ImNotAtWork observes below, you don't annoy others with your conversation. That is, of course unless you're the dickhead in the movie theater who thinks that his bright 4" screen is not annoying every single person seated behind him.
Sorry, but texting is nothing more than a 19th century technology without the latency of telegrapher and courier.
you don't buy many groceries at one time do you? How many items can you list in 140 characters?
How old is your phone if it won't do long messages? My phone seems to have a limit of 765 characters. My phone from about 2001 did the same.
(Beyond that it says "Sending as MMS" (which aren't unlimited on my plan), I'm not sure if my 2001 phone did this, I've never reached the limit in practise.)