Teens in US sending more texts than ever: study

Text messaging has eclipsed the telephone call to become the most frequent form of communication among US teenagers, and girls send more than twice as many messages as boys, according to a new study.The study by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and the University of Michigan released Tuesday found that the average adolescent sends or receives 50 or more messages a day, or 1,500 texts per month.Thirty-one percent send and receive more than 100 messages per day or more than 3,000 messages a month and 15 percent send more than 200 texts a day.

One-fourth of US teenagers aged 16 and 17 have sent text messages while driving and over 40 percent have had a cellphone conversation while behind the wheel, according to a study published on Monday.Twenty-six percent of teenagers aged 16 and 17 have texted while driving, according to the survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project -- about the same rate as found in separate studies conducted among adults.The survey found boys and girls were equally likely to text while driving.

Has Facebook lost its cool? That’s a question TIME posed earlier this year to dozens of teenagers, who mostly insisted that newer social networks like Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter were more engaging, even if (and partially because) everyone they knew in real life wasn’t on them. Now, a new study by the Pew Research Center has confirmed that teens are growing a bit weary of the world’s largest social network. The study, part of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, found that teens on Facebook are feeling stressed by “drama,” one of the great burdens of adolescent life.

Has Facebook lost its cool? That’s a question TIME posed earlier this year to dozens of teenagers, who mostly insisted that newer social networks like Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter were more engaging, even if (and partially because) everyone they knew in real life wasn’t on them. Now, a new study by the Pew Research Center has confirmed that teens are growing a bit weary of the world’s largest social network. The study, part of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, found that teens on Facebook are feeling stressed by “drama,” one of the great burdens of adolescent life.

This chart comes from Business Insider Intelligence, a new research and and analysis service focused on the mobile and Internet industries. Sign up for a free trial here.

Young Americans send almost ten times as many texts as Americans over 55. According to Experian, U.S. smartphone owners aged 18 to 24 send 2,022 texts per month on average — 67 texts on a daily basis — and receive another 1,831. That's nearly double their slightly older peers, smartphone users aged 25 to 34.

More American adults are texting but they are not tapping out nearly as many messages per day on their cellphones as teenagers, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center.The survey, conducted for the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project in May 2010, found that 72 percent of American adults aged 18 and older send and receive text messages, up from 65 percent in September 2009.

Fifteen percent of US teenagers aged 12 to 17 who own mobile phones have received nude or nearly nude images of someone they know, according to a survey released on Tuesday.Only four percent of mobile phone-owning teens in that age group have sent sexually suggestive pictures of themselves, a practice known as "sexting," according to the Pew Research Center?s Internet & American Life Project.The Pew survey found that girls and boys were equally as likely to have sent a suggestive picture to another person and older teenagers were more likely to have engaged in "sexting."