Average teen sends 3,339 texts per month | Hacker News Reader

Average teen sends 3,339 texts per month

cnn.com

20 pointsnano8122 comments

As a teenager who uses texting a lot (16k sent last month)... here's some thoughts about why this isn't so extreme:

1) Texting works like IM for most people. It's a back and forth conversation where each message generally represents one line of conversation. A conversation on IM can span 100s of lines easily; having several long bits of conversation to different people throughout the day quickly adds up even if it is not especially consuming.

2) Further, on some plans texting can include other things. Somewhat ironically considering what I said above, Mobile IM on many Verizon phones counts as a text every time a message is sent or received. So if I'm using AIM, MSN, etc on my non-data plan phone, I can rack up text numbers quickly.

3) Twitter. I don't use it on my phone, but I know some who do. If you get Twitter texts every time someone you follow updates, you can have a lot of extra traffic being sent. The same goes for Facebook status messages and whatever other traffic can go through a phone.

I don't really consider myself a super heavy texter, but it's my main conversation with some people for even longer conversations. I also used about 1200 minutes on the phone; it's not just for texting. But when you're limited to no data plan, and you have a phone that has a default keyboard and so forth (I have an LG Voyager, chosen simply for having the best phone keyboard for me), it can look like a lot.

16k is only about 500 messages a day. Check your last IM log.. I looked at one on Skype text chat and it was at 650 from just a few of hours of off and on talking to a nerd friend as he messed with some stuff on his Droid 2.

The numbers for older people are higher than I would've expected as well. 45-54 year olds send an average of 500 or so texts per month? I'm in my late 20s and don't average that (I'm closer to 200). I wonder what the distributions look like; are there a handful of people sending 10,000?

Median would be more instructive than mean, in other words.

Once clearly illustrated by my psychology professor: She said if a student asked her what the average salary of her graduates was, she’d answer with the median, considering one of her students went on to become an NBA star, but most earned small fractions of his salary.

I have only just aged out of the 45-54 range. In a very active month I might send a few more than 20; in a quieter month I might send fewer than 10.

> are there a handful of people sending 10,000?

You bet; some people use texts like a mobile IM client.

That's over a hundred a day. Bollocks. This "study" has people in their mid thirties sending ten a day, which also seems ridiculous. Some of them, sure, but on average? Nonsense.

This is really surprising. The volume for teens completely blow everyone else out the water. At this rate, they're sending 7 texts per hour ALL day and night, assuming they take 8 hours to sleep.

What the hell are these kids talking about?

How many messages do you send on IM, IRC, etc? Now pretend two things:

A) you're stuck at school without a computer and your parents won't buy you an iPhone or anything that can use IM or IRC, but you have a feature phone that can text and so do all your friends...

B) you write in the style where you type 3 words, hit enter, type 5 more words, hit enter, so one paragraph turns into 10 messages.

Exactly! If I were in high school, I'd be texting all day long.

This is a symptom of a deeper problem, namely that high school isn't very engaging for most people.

Texts, tweets, and Facebook walls are the new slambook signing or passed note in class (or even Mad Magazine hidden in the textbook). It's a distraction, a thing to pass the time in homeroom or a really boring lecture.

And, for the record, high school has never been engaging, even for really really smart people.

And, for the record, high school has never been engaging, even for really really smart people.

I'd argue it is particularly not engaging for extremely smart people. Most classes move forward at the speed of the average student.

You have to realize that once you get an unlimited texting plan, you don't hesitate to send a ton of one or two word texts.

Newer SMS interfaces also encourage that by making each text look like just another line in a chat, instead of a separate "message". I have an older phone where you have to read each text message as a separate message, and it causes a bit of an expectations mismatch when I'm texting with someone who's using a client that makes it look like a chat window.

I usually send something concise but information-packed, sort of like a tweet, and minimize separate texts. So I might send something like:

  just got downtown, at cafe whatever. heard from jim?

But if I had a chat-like interface on my phone, I might write three separate messages,

  just got downtown
  at cafe whatever
  heard from jim?

For me, the latter style is really annoying to receive, because it gets queued as a series of incoming messages I have to read and dismiss separately, but I think that's becoming less common on newer phones. If I switched to that style, I could easily see sending 3x+ more messages without actually changing how much information I send.

...to everyone in your address book at once.

Wait, what? This can't be accurate. I'm 17, and the heviest texter my age I know sends around 800 a month. Among me and my friends, the average is roughly 30.

it can be accurate, I think it just depends on the circumstances. I blew over 300 messages just yesterday. As for age, I just barely turned 18, but when I was in high school I would easily text at 2x or 3x that rate. Reasons it was so high can be attributed to not being challenged in school (so text in class), i could easily talk to all friends through the same medium (and multiple of them at a time), and its fairly easy to mass message to figure out plans.

Original article from Nielsen, with related charts:

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/u-s-teen-m...

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

Forcing kids to sit in school all day doesn't result in them paying attention to school. They just text all day.

Something needs to change.

My 13 year old niece is within this range, maybe 1000 more or so. And her average monthly voice time is about 18 minutes. All to her parents.

That is one text every ten minutes counting a day as being 24 hours. As most people sleep at least eight hours, some ten minutes have two texts sent, that is a highly dubious if not an absolute outright made up claim!

This ties in well with the Scott Adams blog post that came up recently.

"Wireless Voice Calls Are Obsolete" http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/wireless_voice_calls_are_o...

This would explain why I have had to wait for a teen to finish texting while they should of been working at a Best Buy, a local ice cream place, and a carnival I took my kids to just in the past month. And in two of the cases they seemed to think it was rude of me to interrupt them.

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