Americans Really Are Texting.

Confirmation that Americans are no different from the rest of the world and are now getting the texting habit is revealed in a report that estimates that 27% of mobile phone oweners in the USA have used SMS in the last month.

About 134 million American adults have cell phones and 27% of them say they have used the text message feature on those phones within the past month. That represents 34 million people who use a cell feature also known as short message service or SMS.

Spam Incentive
Of those who use the texting feature on their phones, 28% say they have received unsolicited commercial text messages on their phone. However the report does not reveal how this was defined or even the amount of Spam they have received.
One weakness of the SMS model that many US carriers cling to is the receiver pays to receive messages. Together with open SMS to email gateways, this makes sending spam to mobiles both easier and more profitable than in most other countries where the sender pays.

The findings come from a nationwide phone survey of 1,460 cell phone users by the Pew Internet & American Life Project between January 13 and February 9.

Everybody Is Doing It
The most likely cell phone texters are in Generation Y (ages 18-27). Fully 63% of those with cell phones in that group are texters, compared to 31% of cell phone owners in Generation X (ages 28-39), 18% of cell phone owners among younger Baby Boomers (age 40-49), 13% of cell phone owners among older Baby Boomers (ages 50-58), and 7% of cell phone owners among those over age 60.
The experience in other countries is that the texting habit spreads up the age range and that once people have tried it, they tend to continue and use it more.

"The proliferation of cell phones and the spread of text messaging are changing patterns of commuication for many Americans -- espeically younger ones," said Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. "These technologies are introducing new notions about what it means to be 'present' with someone else and about what it means to be in conversation with them. For some cell phone users, the stream of conversation hardly ever ends."

However, younger American adults are less likely to be cell phone owners than their elders. Fully 76% of those in GenX own cell phones and 75% of younger Baby Boomers own them. Some 68% of GenY and 68% of older Baby Boomers own cell phones, as do 62% of those over age 60.

Cell phone texters also tend be technologically oriented. Some 58% of texters have broadband at home and 73% have at least six years experience with the internet.

But it is also true that 9% of cell phone texters say they are not internet users confirming that they are becoming a harder to reach group.