Teens and Technology - Pew Internet & American Life Project

Part 5.
Communications Choices
Face-to-face and phone time still beats screen time.
Even with their great affection for technology, teens still report, on average, spending
more time physically with their friends doing social things outside of school than they
report interacting with friends through technology. An average youth between ages 12
and 17 reports spending 10.3 hours a week with friends doing social activities outside of
school and about 7.8 hours talking with friends via technology like the telephone, email,
IM, or text messaging.
12%
3%
24%
Communications Tool Choice: What Teens
Use Most Often
5% 4%
52%
Regular phone
IM
Cell phone
Text message
Email
Use phone/written
messages equally
Asked in general how they
most often communicate
with their friends over voice
or text, teens report that they
use the phone. Close to twothirds
(63%) report calling
friends on the phone to talk
with them most often, while
about one-third (32%) said
they most often write
messages to their friends. A
very small percentage (4%)
say they do both equally.
Just more than half of all
online teens say they prefer the landline telephone to other methods of communicating
with friends. Instant messaging is the next most popular option, with a quarter of online
teens reporting that they use it most. Among all online teens, the cell phone is the next
most frequent choice, with 12% of all online teens selecting it as their favorite. Regular
email is the preference of just 5% of online teens, and text messaging rings in with 3% of
online teens saying they use it most.
Even though statistics regarding teens’ overall use of email and IM have remained stable
over the past four years, when asked what they choose to use most often, the telephone
still trumps all forms of written communication. Within the written choices, instant
messaging consistently beats email, as well as text messaging, as the method of choice
for talking with friends.
Teens and Technology - 30 - Pew Internet & American Life Project