How many text messages do you send per month? Or do you send so many that I should be asking how many you send every day? A new study shows that over a third — 36 percent — of cellphone owners use text messaging nearly every day. An additional 29 percent say that they use text messaging at least occasionally, meaning that only 35 percent of U.S. cellphone owners completely eschew SMS functions. These are mostly personal messages — just eight percent of those who use SMS said they use it to text a colleague.
What’s a bit crazier is that 40 percent of those who use SMS daily send over 250 messages a month. I guess they’re the ones that are putting total monthly SMS numbers in the billions.
Nearly a majority of people — 48 percent — keep their texting to five people or fewer. Twenty-one percent send to between six and ten people, and an astonishing 20 percent send to more than 10 people.
Another near-majority — 49 percent — says that SMS is a substitute for a phone call. I’m seeing this more and more all the time. There are certain people who you just can’t do that with — me, for instance. I can never feel my phone vibrate in my pocket, and years of playing guitar in friends’ basements has left my hearing less than standard.
As we see an increasing number of phones with QWERTY keyboards hitting the market, I suspect that we’ll see SMS rates go up. Or maybe not. Maybe people will just switch over to email. Who knows?
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