A 13-year-old girl sent 14,528 text messages in a month

Monday, January 12, 2009

(2) Comments

In 2007 Kevin Kelly in his talk on TED said that we make 100 billion clicks per day, send 2 milion emails per second and a million instant messages per second. Compared to the Congress Library, which is about 20 terabites, we send 7 terabites of information per second. Bless him for the ability to gather the numbers.

I was chatting with another fellow student a while ago over a cup of coffee and she pointed out an interesting thing on how fragmented our communication has become. Those in their 30s are the generation of the emails, those in their 20s (like me) - instant messaging, while the teenagers are the mobile generation, or the 'thumb generation' as Mizuko Ito calls them. I twittered once asking whether 200 messages a day was a lot and got a confirmation that I am in a bit of a generation gap.

I'm afraid a 13-year-old American Reina Hardesty is has risen the bar: she sent a mind boggling 14,528 text messages in a month (or a message every 2 minutes of every waking hour).

What's fascinating is that another champion in texting is a 16-year-old girl from New Zealand. Is the gender factor a coincidence?
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Lina

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2 Responses to "A 13-year-old girl sent 14,528 text messages in a month"

Anonymous said :
January 29, 2009 at 11:39 AM
14,528 texts in a month is a lot, but there are kids who write more than that in other contexts, like email and short stories (probably not many with pen and paper, though!). She probably has a busy network of close friends; it would be interesting to see a breakdown of those texts, find out how often she sees her texting companions, whether she has much time for hobbies, etc.

Is the gender factor a coincidence?

Probably not. I think women use texting as another way to have a conversation, whereas men use it more as a way to exchange information. Women tend to keep these conversations going; men tend to get to the point and finish up. Generally speaking! There was a study done on the subject, but I can only find indirect references to it.
Lina said :
February 3, 2009 at 4:26 AM
thanks for the reference on the study! I found your observation regarding information exchange and keeping up the conversation quite a fascinating one though.

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