Teenagers Send 5.5 Texts per Hour While Awake

Teenagers send, on average, 2,779 text messages a month. Yes, you read that right.

At that rate, and removing seven hours per day for sleep, teens (aged 13 to 18) send about 5.5 text messages per hour, or roughly one every 10 minutes. Presuming that there are still some schools that restrict cell phone usage in classrooms (we hope), we can extrapolate that when teens are not sleeping or in school, the rate is much higher, and includes time while driving (as if the thought of sharing the road with teenage drivers wasn’t scary enough).

According to a Nielsen study released this week about cell phone usage, teenagers actually text on their phones about four times as much as they talk. Once they reach the 18-24 age demographic, the figures switch and they begin talking more than they text. In fact, as phone owners’ ages rise, a strange thing happens: the number of texts diminishes while the amount of talk-time increases: for every new age bracket reached, texting drops in half. At age 65 and over, mobile users send an average of just 32 texts per month.

And the business about not texting while sleeping? Don’t count on it. According to a recent Pew (News - Alert) research study, most teens don’t turn off their phones at night. Many confessed to putting their phones under their pillows at night, on low ring settings or vibrate, so they can feel it or hear it in order to respond to messages or calls in the middle of the night.

Nobody knows why this is, but psychologists could probably throw out some theories. Perhaps the asynchronous nature of texting makes communication easier for this more socially awkward demographic. As people grow up and gain confidence, speaking directly with another person becomes easier. Text messages are more casually flirtatious: messages can be sent that contain double meanings, and if overtures are rejected, the sender doesn’t need to face open rejection.

While the negative social implications of too much texting can be debated, it’s not hard to see the vehicular costs. The Pew study found that 26 percent of teens confessed to texting while driving (keep in mind, these are just the ones willing to be honest about it). According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2008 (the last year for which stats were available), nearly 6,000 people were killed and half a million injured in crashes caused by a distracted driver.

Additionally, it looks like the teens’ younger siblings are catching up. The age group defined as “under 12” are now sending about 1,146 messages per month, which translated to nearly four text messages per hour when they are awake. This represents an eight percent increase in only one year. One wonders if most of those messages are sent and received during commercial breaks of “SpongeBob SquarePants.”

Nielsen compiled the data by studying 40,000 cell phone bills collected from April of 2009 to March 2010.