Britons now text more than talk

Britons prefer to text friends or keep in touch on Facebook rather than chat on the phone, leading to the first ever decline in mobile voice calls, according to the UK’s telecoms regulator. The average consumer now sends 50 texts a week, a number that has doubled in four years, with over 150 billion text message sent in 2011, Ofcom said in its annual Communications Market Report. More than half of UK adults (58 per cent) reported using texts at least once a day to communicate with their family and friends, whereas the figure for mobile phone calls was 47 per cent. Face-to-face conversations were the second most popular form of daily contact for British adults at 49 per cent. They also spend almost an hour and a half a week using email, on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, or using a mobile to access the Internet, while fewer calls were made on both fixed-line and mobile phones. The amount of time spent talking on the phone fell by 5 per cent in 2011, the survey said, reflecting a 10 per cent drop in the volume of calls from landlines and, for the first time, a fall in mobile calls, by just over 1 per cent. Unsurprisingly, young people are leading the charge, despite saying they prefer to talk face to face. Some 96 per cent of 16-24 year olds use a text-based application to keep in touch with friends and family daily, it found, with 90 per cent sending texts and 73 per cent using social networking sites. The change in habits went hand in hand with rising numbers of smartphones, which make accessing the Internet on the move easier. Despite the popularity of text messages, the overwhelming majority of Britons said they would prefer to see their loved ones in person (67 per cent) or speak on the phone (10 per cent). However, the trend looks set to continue. Some 90 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds said they use text messaging at least once a day to communicate with friends and family, followed by social networking (74 per cent) and mobile phone calls (67 per cent). The figure for face-to-face contact among that demographic was 63 per cent, making it the least popular form of communication for that age group — though it was still higher than among adults.