US Teens Send 3,339 SMS Texts Per Month
According to a recent article on Mashable [click the graphic to go to the article—don’t forget to use Ctrl+Click to open in a new Tab] the average 13 to 17 year old teen in the US sends 3,339 SMS texts per month.
Mashable say this works out to six texts for every waking hour based on 18 waking hours per day. I guess this means the average teen only gets 6 hours sleep per average day.
From what I can work out the average cost of an SMS in Australia is 23 cents. This is based on what I can work out from carrier sites on the Web. It seems the cost of texts varies from 18 cents to 28 cents—depending on plans. So, at 23 cents, over a month that would be about $770 per month for texts alone.
Obviously it does not actually cost this due to ‘plans’ and included free texts. Depending on plans and carriers you get hundreds of free texts included. With some plans texts to people with phones covered by the same carrier are always free—which works out good if your girlfriend/boyfriend is using the same carrier. I know one person where I work who has a completely separate mobile phone with another carrier just for communications with his girlfriend. This is because his normal/work mobile has to be with a certain carrier due to work requirements.
While the average is 3,339 texts per month for 13 to 17 year olds the girls send more than the boys; which should not come as a surprise to anyone as females are genetically coded to be more ‘social’ than males. On average the girls send 4,050 texts per month, while the boys only manage 2,539. And before anyone posts a comment pointing out that 4,050+2,539 divided by 2 does not provide 3,339 there were more girls in the survey than boys and the calculated average is a true average based on the survey results.
43 percent (sic, I know you are not supposed to start a sentence with a numerical number) of the teens surveyed said that texting was the reason they wanted a mobile phone.
I am 57 and it seems I should be sending about 130 texts a month. I would say that I am battling to send to send 30 per month, and most months I doubt I get to 10.
