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College students overwhelmingly prefer text messages to phone calls, e-mail, and IMs

A study found that 59% of students named texting as their preferred method of communication, and they're more likely to own smartphones, too.

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Mobile | by Samuel Axon | Mon Mar 30, 2009 6:20PM | 1 comment

We know some of our readers are college students, so feel free to either confirm or deny this one, guys and gals: Ball State University in Indiana surveyed 300 of its students and found that amongst them text messaging is the preferred method of communication, beating e-mail, instant messaging, and even regular phone calls by a significant margin.

When asked which method they preferred, 59% of respondents said SMS texting, 17% said phone calls, 9% said IMs, and an abysmal 7% said e-mail. Curiously, social networking websites weren't named. You'd better bet those'd rank highly too.

The survey also found that the college students there were 8% more likely (27% versus 19%) than the general adult population to have feature-rich, internet-connected smartphones. This is good news, since many of those phones have full QWERTY keypads. We prefer "I'm drunk, but I have to say it. I'm still in love with you. Please call me!" to "omg so drunk still in luv wit u plz cal."

[Image courtesy of Flickr user adotjdotsmith. Used via Creative Commons.]

This story around the web:

Trusted sources:
external link Ball State Daily News - OUR VIEW: Texts… [bsudailynews.com]
external link Text Overtakes IM, Email, Voice Among College… [businessvoip.tmcnet.com]
external link Text Overtakes IM, Email, Voice Among College… [textually.org]
external link Texting Is Preferred Communication Method for… [Switched]

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Related glossary terms:
Smartphone, QWERTY keyboard, Social networking, SMS (Short Message Service), IM (Instant messaging)

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Anonymous (11:53 AM on Fri Feb 26, 2010)

I'm 26 and out of college for 3 years. I work as a teacher so i use our interoffice e-mail to communictate with other teachers unless I have the teachers number then I text because its instant not everyone is always sitting at their desk for an email.

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