Texting is up and phone use is down among 12- to 17-year-olds
Epic telephone calls by teenagers and preteens may be a thing of the past. A new report by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project has found that as the frequency of youth texting continues to increase, their use of the phone is on a significant slide.
In interviews with 799 children ages 12 to 17, researchers found that 63% say they exchange text messages with friends every day, while only 29% say they talk daily with friends on a cellphone.
As for the land line, it appears to be disappearing from the teenage communication repertoire entirely: Only 14% say they talk to friends on land lines every day, and nearly 31% said they never talk to friends on a land line.
At the same time, the amount of texts that teens send is growing. The median number of texts sent on a typical day by youths 12 to 17 is now 60, up from 50 in 2009.
For girls, the median is 100.
According to the report, the frequency with which 12- to 17-year-olds are texting has not changed from 2009 among whites but has grown considerably among blacks, who are sending a median of 80 texts a day, up from 60 in 2009, and Hispanics, 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. Only 22% of youths say they use the service on a daily basis.
