LG along with the research firm Interpret have carried out a survey from April 8th to 13th among 1,000 US teens and tweens to determine text messaging habits of this population. Results revealed that teens and tweens are sending 20,209 texts every second, or more than 1.2 million texts every minute.
The research also revealed that there is a privacy issue for teens, as they rank their SMS higher than diaries or emails: 52% of teens say a parent reading their SMS is worse than if they read their emails or diaries. One of the reasons may be that 32% of teens feel more comfortable speaking freely over text.
And there’s a reason for this worry: LG survey found that 31% of teens think parents check their SMS, but the number is actually higher, with 47% of younger parents having actually read their teens’ texts without consent.
Speaking of parents, they are increasingly using SMS as a form of communication, especially among younger parents who are sending 25 texts per day compared to 9 texts per day for older parents.
Furthermore, LG found that sexting — the act of sending a message via text that is sexual in nature — has been on the rise, with 33% of teens have already received such a message. On the other end, 62% of parents would be worried if their teens’ message was of a sexual nature…
Finally, it’s worth adding that LG has prepared a special website called DTXTR to help parents decode those unknown word used in the text messages their kids are sending.