Oh, children. We know they love to text, but a new poll by C&R Research shows that 80 percent of 11-13 and 14-18 year-olds have texted in the last week. Both age groups say that texting, above all other forms of communication, is their preferred way to keep in touch with everyone. Teenagers would rather text than email, call, or instant message them.
“Tweens and teens increasingly see e-mail as a means to an end – not an essential mode of communication,” said Amy Henry, Vice President of Youth Services for C&R. “They’re more likely to have an e-mail address to give them access to social networking sites like Facebook than to treat it as a home base for communication. Interestingly, many maintain e-mail addresses for communicating with teachers about assignments. Meanwhile, IMing through tools like AIM seems to be over, but the instant messaging applications on social networking sites are increasingly popular.”
An earlier study showed the average teen sends more than 3000 texts a month. Many older teens have trouble with texting while driving as well. This study is further confirmation of the texting craze around the country.
Interestingly, though children 6-10 don’t own as many cell phones (only 19 percent do), they’re learning the texting game pretty quick. Kids send an average of almost 16 messages per day, meaning even they are logging about 500 texts a month.
What will be the next big way to communicate? When I was younger, it was AIM and ICQ instant messaging programs. Before that it was email, and long ago the phone used to be a big deal.
