Texting more popular than phoning

Texting is now more popular than phoning from both mobiles and landlines, according to a recent Ofcom report. In 2011, 200 texts on average per month per person were sent, compared to 70 per month in 2006. There are no data regarding usage of Skype and similar programs, but I would imagine that people have not given up entirely talking to one another, and that more people are speaking to each other via their computer, since it is a free service.

 

According to Ofcom, one of the reasons for the increasing popularity of text messaging is the good deals offered by mobile phone networks, many of whom offer free texts, or at least charge less for sending a text than making a phone call. More people are sending messages to friends via Facebook and other social networking sites, and they are using their mobile phone to access these sites.

 

Many people think that the popularity of texting sounds the death knell for grammatical and well-spelt English. I contributed briefly to a short piece on the Ofcom report on Radio Scotland's Newsweek programme yesterday (listen here for a few more days; it was the very last segment on the programme, so comes up about 5 minutes before the end). I don't send or receive anywhere near 200 texts a month, but I can see the value of texting. I used to find it very useful a few years ago when keeping in touch with my children when they were out, as they didn't mind me texting too much as their friends didn't have to know who was texting them or what they were texting me back, whereas a phone call is a bit more public.

 

Before mobile phones really took off, train carriages used to be fairly quiet places with most people sitting reading. Then, with the advent of mobile phones, train journeys were ruined by several mobile phone conversations going on around you simultaneously. Now I find that train carriages are generally quite quiet places again, with most people sitting texting, playing games or doing some other quiet activity that entails staring at their mobile phone screen.

 

The Ofcom report can be accessed here, but be warned - it's hundreds of pages long.

Comments

[John]

Interesting as always, Susan.

I receive and/or send probably 200-300 personal e-mails, texts, and other forms of IM's a week, excluding work, RSS & other feeds and adverts.

The real value to me lies in the asynchronous nature of the beast. On a telephone, someone says something to me, I listen, then respond, and so on. Everyone else waits.

Although it is still nice to actually speak to people, async allows me to converse with multiple people virtually simultaneously. True, it can be a bit disjointed at times, but it is highly effective.

There is also an advantage in that in poor mobile coverage areas, texts and email seem to 'burst' in and out more effectively than the system can 'hold' phone connections.

To your point about grammar, etc., it is true, and I've seen some degradation in my own texting (from a Droid) simply because of the tiny keypad. This usually takes the form of all lower case, incomplete sentences, no apostrophes, etc. I force myself to write properly with all but a couple of people.

Now to read the Ofcom report.

Thanks for posting.

[Virtual Linguist]

Thanks, John. 200-300 emails and texts a week! That would drive me mad!