Nielsen Research

New data from Nielsen proves how much teens are texting. Here are the results from their recent research. According to an analysis of 65,000+ mobile subscribers' phone bills, U.S. teens have tripled their data usage. In the third quarter of 2011, teens aged 13-17 averaged 320 MB of data per month. This number has increased 256% over the last year, and not surprisingly teens are are consuming data faster than any other age group. But when it comes to data usage, boys are consuming 382 MB per month while girls only use 266 MB. This is not the case when it comes to texting.

Teens averaged 3,417 messages (SMS and MMS) in Q3 2011, which breaks down to seven messages per waking hour. Girls texted 3,952 messages per month, nearly 1.5 times as much as their teenage boy counter parts, who averaged only 2,815 texts for that time period. The slightly older age group of 18-24 year-olds only sent 1,914 messages.

Teens are not very interested in making calls from their mobile devices, with voice usage down from 685 to 572 minutes per month. Overall, teens see texts as faster, easier and a lot more fun.