If you think you see people never letting go of their mobile phones, you aren’t imagining things. The latest report from Nielsen shows that the average teen in the US is now sending and/or receiving 3,339 text messages every month.
That breaks down to around 111 texts a day, or about one text message every 15 minutes. It’s pretty astounding that this is the *average* of every single teenager in the US with a cell phone.
Female users edged out their male counterparts, as the average female teen was reported to exchange 4,050 texts every month. The number is only 2,539 for males.
Interestingly, though actually not surprising at all, the usage of voice features on mobile phones is decreasing. The average teen now spends just 646 minutes talking on their phone, a 14% decrease from last year. Everyone is spending more time texting and less time talking.
In fact, actually using their phone as a phone was the only thing people are doing less. More teens are sending pictures messages and taking their mobile online. Nearly half of all teenagers now actively connect to the Internet from their phone.
In this metric, male users are leading. They use 75 MB of mobile data per month, on average, while female teens are only downloading 53 MB. Both of those numbers are gargantuan jumps from the same time last year, though, where the average teen was only using between 11 MB and 17 MB of data.
Teenagers that Nielsen polled said they preferred texting to talking because it was easier, faster, and more fun. Of course it also makes those teen things – like talking to someone you have a crush on, or letting your parents know you’ll be out late – less intimidating.
Texting was ranked by teens as the most important reason to own a phone, with 43% making that assertion. 35% said that safety was the most important, and 34% said it was “keeping in touch with friends.”
