Text Messaging: Teens vs. Adults

If my teenage daughter is any indication of the results of this poll,
I already know the answer to this one without even reading the story or viewing the results of the poll. It didn't take me long to figure out that the best way to go with a teen who has a cell phone is to go ahead and add the unlimited text messaging to their phone even if it's $10 or $15 per month - believe me, you'll come out ahead in the long run. Or, you could have text messaging capability removed all together from the phone; I have a friend who had to do this since his son had the unlimited in-network plus an additional 1000 out-of-network text messaging plan, and still went over, way over...

Anyway, here's the poll...
Associated Press
Poll: Nearly half of teens use instant messaging, fyi
WASHINGTON -- Almost half of teens, 48 percent of those ages 13-18, use instant messaging, according to an AP-AOL poll. That's more than twice the percentage of adults who use it.

According to the poll:
Almost three-fourths of adults who do use instant messages still communicate with e-mail more often. Almost three-fourths of teens send instant messages more than e-mail. More than half of the teens who use instant messages send more than 25 a day, and 1 in 5 send more than 100. Three-fourths of adult users send fewer than 25 IMs a day. Teen users (30 percent) are almost twice as likely as adults (17 percent) to say they can't imagine life without instant messaging. When keeping up with a friend who is far away, teens are most likely to use instant messaging, while adults turn first to e-mail. About a fifth of teen IM users have used IM to ask for or accept a date. Almost as many, 16 percent, have used it to break up with someone.

A bow to the traditional: When sharing serious or confidential news, both teens and adults prefer to use the telephone, the poll said. The survey of 1,013 adults and 500 teens was conducted online by Knowledge Networks from Nov. 30-Dec. 4. The margin of sampling error for the adults was plus or minus 4 percentage points, 5.5 points for teens.