Editorials
Are Teens Texting Too Much? I Think So!
It’s hard to preach it though since my 18-year-old daughter is well above the national average.
On one hand, I think my daughter texts too much, but other the other hand she is saving me money when she texts instead of calling her friends. She is staying within her 2GB data plan and she is only using up about 10% of our minutes. If we didn’t have unlimited texting, I would be in trouble.
According to a recent study about teens and cellphones by OnlineSchools, the average teen texts 3,417 times a month. My daughter is at about 2,500 sent and 2,500 received with a week left in the current month. When they say an average teen texts 3,417 times a month, are they talking about sent and received texts together or only outgoing texts?
How much do you and your family text? I am at about 200 a month and my wife 20-30.
Here is an infographic provided by OnlineSchools that pulls data from Q3 2011 from Neilson.
Some notable numbers are that girls are texting more than boys. This is no surprise. Growing up, girls used the phone to chat with their friends way more than guys. Android is the most popular OS among 18-24 year olds with iPhone coming in at #2.
Texting while Driving? PLEASE DON’T.
I was recently rear ended by a college student in town. I was sitting still at a stop light and when I looked into my rear view mirror, I noticed a car coming and it didn’t look like she was slowing down. I saw that the driver was looking down. While I don’t know for sure if she was texting or reading emails, but I have a good feeling that my life was inconvenienced because of a teen texting while driving. AT&T has a really good campaign urging people not to text and drive. Drivers are already bad enough these days, we don’t need another distraction.
Guest
02/16/2012 at 12:06 am
Age: 21
Gender: MaleI send/receive probably 2,000 texts a month and use 1.5 – 2GB of data. This is pretty consistent too lol
Fuzz One
02/16/2012 at 5:04 am
Seriously, nothing is wrong anymore with texting. It saves money compared to calls. Just never text or even talk on the phone when driving. That’s where the problem begins. Eyes and ears on the road at all times!
Anonymous
02/16/2012 at 10:50 am
I
read that 94% of drivers think Text and Drive is lethal but over one
third still do it. What to do? I think legislation has value in
raising public awareness in forums like this one but it will be
difficult to solely legislate our way out of this issue. I just read
that over 3/4 of teens text daily – many text more than 4000 times a
month (that’s outgoing only!). New college students no longer have email addresses! They use
texting and Facebook – even with their professors. Tweens (ages 9 -12)
send texts to each other from their bikes. This text and drive issue
is in its infancy and its not going away.
I
decided to do something about distracted driving after my three year
old daughter was nearly run down right in front of me by a texting
driver. Instead of a shackle that locks down phones and alienates the
user (especially teens) I built a tool called OTTER that is a simple GPS
based, texting auto reply app for smartphones. It also silences call
ringtones while driving unless you have a bluetooth enabled. I think if
we can empower the individual then change will come to our highways now
and not just our laws.
Erik Wood, owner
OTTER LLC
OTTER app
Anonymous
02/16/2012 at 4:38 pm
https://lnk.co/IHOTL
Silver Fang
04/21/2012 at 2:23 pm
Texting to me is the best way to communicate.