The volume of texting among teens has risen from 50 texts a day in 2009 to 60 texts for the median teen text user. The frequency of teens’ phone chatter with friends – on cell phones and landlines – has fallen. But the heaviest texters are also the heaviest talkers with their friends.

Smartphones are gaining teenage users. Some 23% of all those ages 12-17 say they have a smartphone and ownership is highest among older teens: 31% of those ages 14-17 have a smartphone, compared with just 8% of youth ages 12-13.

See the full report which includes the demographics of teen smartphone owners and texters, as well as findings about how they use their devices.

The first in-depth survey of mobile donors, focusing on individuals who sent a contribution to the Haiti earthquake relief effort using the text messaging, finds that a sizeable majority of donors acted in response to images they saw on television, and involved minimal background research. The vast majority of these donors (89%) heard about the Text to Haiti effort on television, and half (50%) made their contribution immediately upon learning about the campaign. Another 23% donated on the same day they heard about it. In addition to conducting little research before making a donation, most have not paid close attention to the ongoing reconstruction efforts in Haiti — 43% have been following these efforts “not too closely” and 15% have been following them “not at all”.

Read the full report to explore who these mobile givers are; the technologies they own; their involvement with charitable organizations and causes; what other types of mobile contributions they have made; and how they perceive mobile giving in comparison to other types of charitable contributions.

Two kinds of digital communication that have grown increasingly popular in the United States — texting with cell phones and use of social networks — are also popular in many places around the world.

Text messaging is a global phenomenon. Across the 21 countries surveyed by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, a median of 75% of cell phone owners say they text. Texting is widespread in both wealthy nations and the developing world. In fact, it is most common among cell phone owners in two of the poorest nations surveyed: Indonesia and Kenya.

The survey, conducted March 21 to May 15, also finds that social networking is popular in many nations around the globe. This is especially true in Israel (53%) and the U.S. (50%), where half or more say they use social networking websites. More than four-in-ten use these sites in Britain (43%), Russia (43%) and Spain (42%). Social networking is generally more common in higher income nations largely due to the fact that wealthier countries have higher rates of internet access.

Read the full report for more about how the use of digital communications varies by a population’s wealth, age distribution and education.

Some 83% of American adults own cell phones and three-quarters of them (73%) send and receive text messages. The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project asked those texters in a survey how they prefer to be contacted on their cell phone and 31% said they preferred texts to talking on the phone, while 53% said they preferred a voice call to a text message. Another 14% said the contact method they prefer depends on the situation.

Young adults are the most avid texters by a wide margin. Cell owners between the ages of 18 and 24 exchange an average of 109.5 messages on a normal day — that works out to more than 3,200 texts per month — and the typical or median cell owner in this age group sends or receives 50 messages per day (or 1500 messages per month).

Read the full report at pewinternet.org for more background on how different demographic groups use texting.

Overview

Texting by adults has increased over the past nine months from 65% of adults sending and receiving texts in September 2009 to 72% texting in May 2010. Still, adults do not send nearly the same number of texts per day as teens ages 12-17, who send and receive, on average, five times more texts per day than adult texters.

• Adults who text typically send and receive a median of 10 texts a day; teens who text send and receive a median of 50 texts per day.
• 5% of all adult texters send more than 200 text messages a day or more than 6,000 texts a month. Fully 15% of teens ages 12-17, and 18% of adults ages 18 to 24 text message more than 200 messages a day, while just 3% of adults ages 25 to 29 do the same.
• Heavy adult texters — those who send and receive more than 50 texts a day — also tend to be heavy users of voice calling. Light texters, who exchange one to 10 texts a day, do not make up for less texting by calling more. Instead, they are light users of both calling and texting.

The original purpose of the cell phone is still the most universal — nearly every cell phone user makes calls on their phone at least occasionally.

• The average adult cell phone owner makes and receives around five voice calls a day.
• Women tend to make slightly fewer calls with their cell phones than men — while 53% of women make and receive five calls or fewer per day, 43% of men say the same. Men are a bit more likely to make slightly more phone calls in a day; 26% of men send and receive six to 10 calls a day, while 20% of women exchange that many calls. Men and women are equally likely to be represented at the extreme high end of callers, with 8% of men and 6% of women making and taking more than 30 calls a day.

Americans especially appreciate that their cell phones make them feel safer (91% of cell owners say this) and help them connect to friends and family to arrange plans (88% agree). Still, some users express irritation with their phone for the disruptions it creates, though the heaviest users of the phone are no more likely to express irritation with their phone than lower level users. Two-in-five (42%) cell phone owners say they feel irritated when a call or text message interrupts them. Cell phones are such a vital part of American’s lives that many users will not be parted from their device, even as they sleep:

• 65% of adults with cell phones say they have ever slept with their cell phone on or right next to their bed.
• Adults who have slept with or near their phones are also more likely to feel positively about their phone. They are more likely to appreciate the way the phone helps them to make plans (94% vs. 78% of those who don’t sleep with their phone) and to see the phone as a source of entertainment (52% vs. 14%). Phone sleepers are just as likely to express irritation with the phone as those who don’t sleep near their handset.

Spam isn’t just for email anymore; it comes in the form of unwanted text messages of all kinds — from coupons to phishing schemes — sent directly to user’s cell phones.

• 57% of adults with cell phones have received unwanted or spam text messages on their phone.

African American and Hispanic cell phone users are more intense and frequent users of all of the phone’s capabilities than whites. Minorities send more text messages and make more calls on average than their white counterparts.

• African American and English-speaking Hispanic adults are slightly more likely than whites to own a cell phone, with 87% of African Americans and English-speaking Hispanics owning a phone, compared with 80% of whites.
• African American and English-speaking Hispanic cell phone owners are more likely than whites to initiate and receive large numbers of calls each day. One-in-eight (12%) Africa American phone owners and 14% of Hispanic cell phone users make and receive more than 30 calls on a typical day, while just 4% of white cell phone users make and receive the same number of calls.
• African American and Hispanic texters typically text more on average than white texters, with a median of 10 texts a day for African Americans and Hispanics and 5 texts a day for whites. White adults are a bit more likely than English-speaking Hispanic adults to say they do not send or receive any texts on a typical day (10% vs. 4%).

Parents with children under age 18 in the home are also keen users of the cell phone. Parents are more likely to own a cell phone than non-parents, and more likely to make five or more calls per day than non-parents (63% vs. 44%), though they do not text more overall. They are more likely to have slept with their phone on or near their bed, and to use the phone for talking for all types of purposes. Texting is less definitive — mostly parents use it for the same reasons and similar frequencies as non-parents. Parents are also more likely than those without minor children at home to appreciate the way the phone allows them to check in, plan on the fly and stave off boredom.

• Parents (90%) are more likely to have a cell phone than adults without children under 18 at home (78%).
• 72% of parents have slept with their phone, compared with 62% of non-parents.
• Parents are more likely to use their cell phone’s voice capabilities several times a day for work calls (32% of parents vs. 19% of non-parents), to check in with someone (28% vs. 17%), to say hello and chat (31% vs. 24%) and to have long personal conversations (13% vs. 7%) than are non-parents. Parents are also more likely than non-parents to coordinate a physical meeting (18% vs. 13%) daily.

Read the full report at pewinternet.org.

Executive Summary

When it comes to socializing and communicating with friends, young Latinos (ages 16 to 25) make extensive use of mobile technology.

Half say they text message (50%) their friends daily, and 45% say they talk daily with friends on a cell phone. Other communication platforms are less widely used for socializing. For example, fewer than one-in-five young Latinos (18%) say they talk daily with their friends on a landline or home phone, and just 10% say they email their friends daily.

These findings are based on a new analysis of data from a nationwide telephone survey of Latinos conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.

Use of mobile communication technologies differs notably among young Latinos by nativity. Two-thirds (65%) of the native born say they communicate with their friends by text message daily, while just 26% of the foreign born do so. And more than half (55%) of the native born talk daily by cell phone with their friends, while just 29% of the foreign born say they do the same.

These differences are explained in part by the fact that the native born are more likely than the foreign born to have a cell phone in the first place. Overall, eight-in-ten (79%) young Latinos say they use a cell phone, with use greater among the native born than the foreign born — 84% vs. 70%.

Even though text messaging and cell phone calls are the most widely used mediums of social communication among young Latinos, they use these platforms less extensively than do their non-Latino counterparts. Among 16- and 17-year-olds¹, just under half (49%) of Hispanics text daily, compared with 64% of non-Hispanics. When it comes to talking with friends daily via cell phone, there is less of a difference — 44% of Hispanics say they do, compared with half (51%) of non-Hispanics who say the same.

Hispanics are the nation’s largest and youngest minority ethnic group. In 2008, there were 46.9 million Hispanics in the U.S., representing 15.4% of the total U.S. population. Among young people, Hispanics represent an even larger share. Some 18%, or 7.5 million, of those ages 16 to 25 are Hispanic.

Other key findings:

• Language: While 68% of English-dominant and half (50%) of bilingual young Latinos use text messaging daily for communication, just 19% of Spanish-dominant young Latinos do the same.
• Gender: Young Hispanic males are less likely than young Hispanic females to use social networking sites for communication — 19% vs. 27%. In contrast, young female Hispanics are less likely than young Hispanic males to communicate face-to-face outside school or work with their friends — 15% vs. 26%.
• Hispanic Youths vs. Hispanic Adults: Hispanics ages 16 to 25 are more likely than Hispanics ages 26 and older to use mobile technologies to communicate with their friends. While half (50%) of young Latinos use texting to communicate, just 21% of older Latinos do the same.
• Latino Youths vs. Other Youths: Among those ages 16 to 17, Latino youths are less likely than non-Latino youths to communicate daily via a landline or home phone with their friends — 13% vs. 32%.

Read the full report at pewhispanic.org.

_{1. This analysis is limited to people ages 16 and 17 as this is the age range for which comparable data for non-Hispanics is available from the Pew Research Center’s Pew Internet and American Life Project. For a description of the data, see the report “Teens and Mobile Phones.”}

Overview

Technology use among foreign-born Latinos continues to lag significantly behind that of their U.S.-born counterparts, according to a new analysis of survey data from the Pew Hispanic Center. The nativity differences are especially pronounced when it comes to internet use.

While 85% of native-born Latinos ages 16 and older go online, only about half (51%) of foreign-born Latinos do so.¹ When it comes to cell phones, 80% of native-born Latinos use one, compared with 72% of the foreign born.

Latinos are the largest minority group and largest immigrant group in the United States. Overall, they comprise 15.4% of the total U.S. population. Among Latinos ages 16 and older, 56% are foreign born and 44% were born in the U.S.²

While rates of technology use among native-born Hispanics are relatively high, technology use for the full population of Hispanics continues to lag behind the use rates of the non-Hispanic population. When it comes to internet use, some 64% of Latinos ages 18 and older go online,³ compared with 78% of non-Latinos. More than three-fourths (76%) of Latinos use a cell phone, compared with 86% of non-Latinos.⁴

Among youths ages 16 to 25, non-Hispanics are approaching near-universal internet use, but the rate is markedly lower for Hispanics.⁵ Some 95% of non-Hispanics ages 16 and 17 go online, as do 96% of those ages 18 to 25; for Hispanics ages 16 to 25, the internet use rate is 77%. The ethnic gap in cell phone use is less pronounced, though still significant. Some 82% of non-Hispanics ages 16 to 17 use a cell phone, compared with 72% of Hispanics. Among those ages 18 to 25, 94% of non-Hispanics use a cell phone, compared with eight-in-ten (80%) Hispanics.

Read the full report at pewhispanic.org.

<sub>1. The results shown here are based on telephone surveys of both landlines and cell phones, so they are not directly comparable to findings in earlier Pew Hispanic Center reports on technology use, which were based on landline-only samples (Fox and Livingston 2007, Livingston, Parker and Fox 2009).
2. ‘Foreign-born’ Latinos are those born outside of the U.S., including those born in Puerto Rico.
3. While data are available for non-Hispanic respondents ages 16 and 17, they cannot easily be combined with the data for ages 18 and older. As such, for aggregate comparisons of Hispanics and non-Hispanics, only ages 18 and older are included, but for age-group analyses, 16- and 17-year olds are included.
4. Results for non-Hispanics ages 18 and older are based on the Pew Internet and American Life Project’s (PIAL) 2009 Reputation Management Survey, which was conducted on cellular as well as landline telephones from August 18 through September 14, 2009 among a nationally representative sample of 2,253 adults.
5. Results for non-Hispanics ages 16 and 17 are based on the PIAL 2009 Parent-Teen Cell Phone Survey, which was conducted on cellular as well as landline telephones from June 26 through September 24, 2009 among a nationally representative sample of 800 teens ages 12 to 17 and their parents. Race/ethnicity for the teens in this survey is based on the race/ethnicity of the parent respondent.</sub>