Teens sure do love their texting. New data from Nielsen proves it.
According to an analysis of 65,000+ mobile subscribers’ phone bills, U.S. teens have tripled their data usage. In the third quarter of 2011, teens aged 13-17 averaged 320 MB of data per month. This number has increased 256% over the last year, and not surprisingly teens are are consuming data faster than any other age group. But when it comes to data usage, boys are consuming 382 MB per month while girls only use 266 MB. This is not the case when it comes to texting.
Teens averaged 3,417 messages (SMS and MMS) in Q3 2011, which breaks down to seven messages per waking hour. Girls texted 3,952 messages per month, nearly 1.5 times as much as their teenage boy counter parts, who averaged only 2,815 texts for that time period. The slightly older age group of 18-24 year-olds only sent 1,914 messages.
Teens are not very interested in making calls from their mobile devices, with voice usage down from 685 to 572 minutes per month. Overall, teens see texts as faster, easier and a lot more fun.
Nielsen issued a similar report last year, and discovered pretty much the same thing: That parents better get their teenagers an unlimited data plan, stat! Results from this past study showed that teens sent out more than six messages per waking hour. This is one less text per hour than the 2011 report.
The previous report also showed app usage on the rise, with 94% of teens saying they used the Internet, messaging, multimedia, gaming and apps on their phones.
Yet despite all this news about texting, teen sexting might actually be more of a myth. NPR recently reported that only 1% of teens have actually created and shared sexually explicit images.