Adult Texting on the Rise

Maybe it’s because we’ve finally figured out how to type on that miniature keyboard… or maybe it’s just so we can talk with our kids. Either way, adults are using their cell phones for texting more than ever before.

72% of adults send and receive texts now, according to a September 2, 2010 Pew Internet study. This is up almost 10% from last year.

Do adults text as much as teenagers? Ha! Nope. Teenagers text about 5 times as many messages per day as adults… and teenage girls age 14-17, who, as I reported in this blog a while back, average 100 messages a day, text 10 times as many messages as adults. (I know… I have one kid of my own kids in that category!)

Some interesting tidbits from that Pew study:

• Adults who text typically send and receive a median of 10 texts a day; teens who text send and receive a median of 50 texts per day.
• 5% of all adult texters send more than 200 text messages a day or more than 6,000 texts a month.
• 90% of parents are more likely to have a cell phone than adults without children under 18 at home (78%).
• 72% parents have slept with their phone on or right next to their bed, compared to 62% of non-parents.
• The average adult cell phone owner makes and receives around 5 voice calls a day.
• Women tend to make slightly fewer calls with their cell phones than men
• African American and English-speaking Hispanic adults are slightly more likely than whites to own a cell phone
• African American and Hispanic texters typically text more on average than white texters

Click here for the whole report.