Teenage girls are thumbing their way to new texting records ahead of boys

Teenage girls are thumbing their way to new texting records ahead of boys - It turns out that teens are texting pretty much all the time. Precisely, they are on average sending and receiving text messages every 10 minutes of every waking hour of every day of the year, according to a new study released by Nielsen.

According to the report on cellphone use in the second quarter of the year, Nielsen found that teenage girls are thumbing their way to new texting records ahead of boys. In total, cellphone users ages 13 to 17 sent and received an average of 3,339 texts a month, up 8 percent from the second quarter of 2009. Girls averaged 4,050 texts, and boys sent 2,539.

Text messaging – because of ease of use and fast transmission – is what 43 percent of teenagers say is their primary use for a cellphone. That's why, according to Nielsen, the first they thing look for in a phone is a QWERTY raised keyboard, as opposed to touch screens. Two years ago they said the primary reason for having a cellphone was for safety factors.

And teens are using more Internet applications. Because of more picture messaging, gaming and e-mail, the average data consumed by teens rose to 62 megabytes in the second quarter compared with 14 megabytes in the second quarter of 2009. ( washingtonpost.com )