Texting More Popular Than Talking: Report

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

You might laugh at those Zits comic strips, which have shown a teenager text messaging his mother from across the room (and more), but you shouldn’t. A recently released Neilsen Mobile report indicates that using a cell phone to actually talk to someone has become passe, and that text messaging is more popular than calling.

This is good news for wireless carriers, who see text messaging as a cash cow. Of course, since California has become the latest state to ban text messaging while driving, people in California will soon have to resort to actually speaking to people, at least while behind the wheel.

From the above table, you can see from Q1 2006 to Q2 2008, calls themselves have remained fairly constant, while text messages have skyrocketed. Seemingly echoing Zits’ strips, the leading texters are in the 13-17 year age range (see below).

1,742 a month? Using a 30 day month, that’s nearly 60 a day, and (subtracting 8 hours for sleep, but not excluding school time) about 3.6 an hour.

Small wonder that California opted for a teenage cell phone ban prior to the text messaging ban Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (that still sounds weird) recently signed into law (and which will take effect on January 1st).

It also makes the recent Harris Interactive poll that said that 42% of teens say that they can text while blindfolded a heck of a lot more believable. I would challenge them to do that on a touch-screen only device, like the LG Dare or the iPhone, though!