Teens in United States send staggering 3,339 text messages per month

by Steven Mostyn - Oct 18 2010, 07:09

Take a stroll down any busy high street and you'll see for yourself just how dependent kids are when it comes to dispatching a seemingly never-ending stream of mobile phone texts.

However, if you require survey figures to help enforce that apparent dependency, a newly released report from research outfit Nielsen suggests that teenagers in the United States send an average of 3,339 text messages every month (which equates to one text every ten minutes).  

The report, which studied usage habits during 2010's second quarter, placed the teen demographic (13 to 17) well ahead of all other age groups and found that teenage girls text almost twice as much as boys, exchanging 4,050 texts per month compared to an average 2,539 by the opposite sex.

Interestingly, Nielsen's study also revealed that actual call time minutes fell 14 percent year on year to an average of just 646 minutes per month, which would suggest that texting is fast becoming the primary form of mobile communication for most teenagers.

As with the texting gender split, girls chat more than boys, spending around 753 minutes per month using their handset as an actual phone while boys only talk for an average of 525 minutes.

When it comes to other preferences and prerequisites, the study found that almost half of all teens only get a mobile phone for the purpose of texting, while a handset equipped with a QWERTY keyboard is a must where device selection is concerned. 

The activity habits of other age groups revealed that those in the 18 to 24 category exchange around 1,630 texts per month, which is around three texts every hour.

Nielsen's figures were collated from the phone bills of more than 60,000 mobile subscribers and the survey data of over 3,000 teenage phone users.

Around the Web