---
title: "Adults Driving Under the Influence of Text"
description: "Nearly half of all adults who regularly text have sent or received a message while driving, compared with just a third of teenage texters."
date: "2010-07-14"
authors:
  - name: "Pew Research Center"
url: "https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2010/07/14/adults-driving-under-the-influence-of-text/"
---

# Adults Driving Under the Influence of Text

Inexperienced teenage drivers are often seen as a danger on the road. But when it comes to being distracted by a popular teenage device — the cell phone — adults are just as guilty as the youngest drivers, if not more so .Nearly half of all texting adults (47%) have sent or received a message while driving, compared with 34% of texting teens (ages 16 and 17). And adults are far more likely than teens to talk on their phones while behind the wheel; 75% of cell-owning adults admit to this compared with 52% of cell-owning teens. Teenagers, however, are about as likely as adults to have been in a car when the driver used the cell phone in a way that put themselves or others in danger. Of course, cell phones can cause trouble off the road as well. One in six cell phone owning adults (17%) has physically bumped into another person or object because they were distracted by their phone. [Read More](https://www.pewresearch.org/pubs/1633/adults-texting-talking-on-cellphone-while-driving-like-teens)