Do u txt ur kdz? Fastest growing group of messagers is adults
By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff | December 17, 2006
Lynne O'Connell and her teenage daughter have discovered a new way to bridge the generation gap: a cellphone screen.
She and Annie, 15, send text messages to each other throughout the day, scheduling rides, sending reminders, and sometimes just talking.
"OMG!" popped up onto O'Connell's cellphone one recent afternoon.
"R U OK?" the 36-year-old mom typed back.
"I got an 83 on my Spanish quiz," Annie replied.
"OMG is right! Great!" her mom pinged back.
"You know if I had asked her at dinner, 'How was school today?' she'd say, 'Fine,' " O'Connell said. "This gives her a way to talk to me without having to talk to me."
"Texting" -- sending brief messages by cellphone -- has grown dramatically beyond the teenage and 20-something "thumb generation" over the past year, in part because parents are beginning to use the cellphone screen as another channel to communicate with children who otherwise might not have much to say.
M:Metrics , a mobile market research company, found that nationwide, the fastest growing group of text messagers is adults. Between September 2005 and September 2006, the number of text-message users from age 45 to 64 grew about seven times as fast as among teenagers under 18, according to their data.
Telephia , a consumer research firm, found that among Cingular users, women in their 40s are the fastest growing text message demographic and fourth largest group.
The overall growth in text messaging is driven by multiple factors. There are adults who use texting to "talk" while they're in meetings and 40-somethings who text their peers. But a survey commissioned by Cingular this summer found that among 1,175 parents, nearly half said their children introduced them to text messaging, and 63 percent said it had improved communication with their child.