Teens send 3,339 SMS messages a month

A recent study by Nielsen on US teens show that they send and an average of 3,339 SMS messages a month. The study also shows that sending SMS messages is their main reason to own a cell phone. US teens also are using much more data on their phones, using up to 62MB per month, up from 14MB just a year earlier. .

SMS ( short message service ) was originally created as a testing and communication system for cellular network technicians and is limited to 160 characters per message. However, SMS has proved well-suited to consumers around the world. In the US teens are now sending SMS messages at a rate of six messages per waking hour, according to the Nielsen study.

Teens are also turning to online sites to send sms to sms enabled handsets. Sites like Text4FreeOnline.com allow the sending of Free SMS and even Free MMS messages which is a compelling option for the often cash strapped teens, or those whose plan minutes have expired. Among teens, the mobile Web has now outpaced earlier mobile data offerings, including pre-installed games, ringtone downloads and instant messaging, Nielsen said.

Texting is easier and faster than making a voice call, as well as more fun, teens told Nielsen. Even teens’ mobile data use seems an extension of the texting experience: The most common data service teens reported using in the last 30 days was MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) or picture messaging, which 62 percent said they had used. That was up from 55 percent a year earlier. Mobile Internet use came in second, with 49 percent using it. Only 40 percent had reported mobile Internet use a year earlier. Far more teens — 38 percent, up from 26 percent — now report downloading applications, too.

Female teens are leading the texting trend, receiving an average of 4,050 messages per month compared with 2,539 for males, but boys are using more data. On average the US male teen consumed 75MB of mobile data per month in the second quarter, up from just 17MB a year earlier, while the average teen girl used 53MB, up from 11MB.

Interestingly, mobile users in the 13-17 age group are also talking less, now averaging 646 minutes just per month, which is down 14 percent from a year ago and the only group of consumers that talked less on cell phones in the second quarter was adults over 55
Texting was the biggest reason to own a cell phone for 43 percent of teens surveyed, up from 42 percent a year earlier. Safety was the second most important reason for a phone, cited by 35 percent of teens, edging out “keeping in touch with friends,” with 34 percent.



According to Nielsen its findings came from analyzing the cell phone bills of more than 60,000 mobile subscribers and survey data from more than 3,000 teens.