Texting triumphs over phone calls as ultimate social tool for teens

Los Angeles, Mar 20 (ANI): Texting has significantly surpassed phone calls as the dominant way teens communicate these days, a new study has revealed.

According to a new report by the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project, frequency of teenage texting is continuously increasing and teen use of the phone is on a considerable downslide.

In interviews with 799 teenagers ages 12 to 17, researchers found that 63 percent of teens say they exchange text messages with friends every day, while only 29percent say they talk daily with friends on a cellphone, LA Times reported.

As for the land line, it is apparently disappearing from the teenage communication repertoire completely: Only 14percent say they talk to friends on land lines every day, and nearly 31percent said they never talk to friends on a land line.

One the other hand, the amount of texts that teens send is growing. The median number (midpoint in the user sample) of texts sent on a typical day by teens is now 60, up from 50 in 2009.

And for girls, that median number is 100.

This came as no surprise to one colleague who asserted that his teenage daughter averaged a total of 6,000 texts a month.

He revealed that his phone bill, which included a physical record of each of those texts, was 25 pages long.

The report also suggested that the frequency with which kids are texting has not changed from 2009 for white teens but has grown significantly for black teens, who are sending a median of 80 texts a day (up from 60 in 2009), and Hispanic kids, who are sending a median of 100 texts a day.

Instant Messaging, which was a popular form of teen communication in the last decade, has also seen a major decline. Just 22 percent of teens say that they use the service on a regular basis. (ANI)