Teens would rather txt than talk on mobiles

According to a new global survey, today's teenagers would be lost without their mobile phones, but they would rather text than talk. While UK teens spend $304m on mobile music a year, and own a collective 4m cameraphones, texting is the favoured form of youth communication, according to the Wireless World Forum mobileYouth 2005 report, the result of a five-year study into how young people all over the world use their mobile phones.

Despite all the technologies that have launched in the last five years, SMS is still the leader,

says Graham Brown, chief executive of W2F, teenagers are keeping things simple - and cheap. In the US, for example, there were 13.5 million text-messages votes during the past season of reality TV show "American Idol. Apparently, the number is up from last season's total of 7.5 million text-message votes-a sign that U.S. users are keen on text-messaging services. In the UK, teenagers are sending more text messages every year, reaching a projected total this year of about 22bn.

It's not just cost. Texting is something immediate and within their control,

says Brown.

It is also something that teenagers' parents often don't understand, because most (70%) use "txtspk" instead of fully worded predictive text. It's quicker and, it seems, easier to disguise from those prying parental eyes.

[Via The Guardian]