Good article in the Washington Post yesterday about the popularity of text messaging among teens and the implications on the parents from out of control bills.  The story "For Texting Teens, an OMG Moment When the Phone Bill Arrives" profiles a high school junior named Sofia that racked up an $1100 bill at 15 cents a pop. 

If you ever wanted a clear picture on the evolution of communication, here it is.  I posted earlier on this topic with the Generational View of Electronic Communications.

I took the data in the article and did some quick math with a few assumptions to get to Sofia’s number of a text message every 4 minutes.  She used 6,807 in one month so let’s assume a 30 day month and that she has 16 waking hours to text (maybe she texts in her sleep, but let’s go with 8 hours off for sleep).  I’m also assuming this is both sent and received as the wireless companies charge on both ends (at least Verizon does).

That’s 227 messages per day, 14 messages per hour, or 1 about every 4 minutes.

Welcome to mobile instant messaging by the next generation. 

It’s not about voice minutes, it’s about data.  The wireless companies are loving it with traffic doubling last year to 158 billion text messages in the US (according to the CTIA) leaving the still strong 20% growth in minute usage in the dust.  Other interesting nuggets in the story are about texting being the second most popular use for a cellphone right behind using them to check the time (silly me, I use a watch).  Also, text messages are not given their own line item on a bill complete with time stamp and destination like a call detail record – they are reported in a bulk number with no line item detail leaving parents with little understanding of the who and when.