Talk to your Teen About Textaholism

According to a new study by Pew Research, “The volume of texting among teens has risen from 50 texts a day in 2009 to 60 texts for the median teen text user. Older teens, boys, and blacks are leading the increase. Texting is the dominant daily mode of communication between teens and all those with whom they communicate.”

No kidding. I’ve found that texting is really convenient because you get to think about what you say before you say it. Not that you can’t do that on a phone, but having a conversation with someone requires focus and attention, whereas texting you can get back to them at your convenience. It seems like common sense that more and more folks, teens especially, are turning to texting because over time, we’re losing our engagement with one another. With so much vying for our attention, we have to be really interested in order to pay attention. Nowadays, everyone must have a 30-second elevator pitch in their pocket in order to captivate a friend into a phone conversation. Ok, well maybe it isn’t that bad, yet. But for those with busy schedules, texting is the ultimate way to stay in tune with what’s going on, as time allows.

What the Pew research study did show, however, is that among teens, the heaviest text-users are also the heaviest talkers.

“The heaviest texters (those who exchange more than 100 texts a day) are much more likely than lighter texters to say that they talk on their cell phone daily. Some 69% of heavy texters talk daily on their cell phones, compared with 46% of medium texters (those exchanging 21-100 texts a day) and 43% of light texters (those exchanging 0-20 texts a day).”

With regards to how this data impacts marketers, consider this. ”As with adults, smartphone-owning teens are avid users of a number of social media applications—91% of teen smartphone owners use social networking sites, and 25% are Twitter users compared with 77% of teens without smartphones who use social network sites and 13% who use Twitter.” We all know that teens are a coveted demographic, because they still live at home and can get mommy and daddy to buy them things. They’re also about to go off to college or enter the work force, where they’ll start becoming consumers on their own, so brand loyalty becomes important. Remember the article on Babies being the new coveted demographic? Some companies are robbing the cradle when it comes to building brand loyalty. Teens are a very influential group, and with teens being text-savvy already, they are a generation that is going to be more and more inclined to smartphone use. Marketers can pick up on this and run with it now, as smartphone using teens = smartphone using adults. That means social networking apps and internet usage. When you use social networking apps and use your mobile device to browse the internet, you become gold to marketers and advertisers. Teens are gold. And right now, gold is at an all time high.