Kids, you've heard of phone calls, right? Did you know that
there's an app on your smartphone that lets you talk out loud to
family and friends? Ask your grandparents about it. We're being
facetious, but it's true that the stereotype of a chatty teen or
young adult spending hours talking on the phone is fading. Those
interactions are being replaced by the image of a kid hunched
over a handset, tapping out texts, emails, or Facebook messages.
Two new pieces of research highlight just how common that image
has become. A British study conducted by independent media
regulator Ofcom found that among 16- to 24-year-olds, phone
calls are being superseded by texts or other e-messages. Per the
research, 96 percent use some form of text-based communication
-- either though social networks (73 percent) or through
traditional texting (90 percent) -- on a daily basis. By
comparison, only 67 percent of that age group talks on the phone
daily. Overall, total time spent on the phone declined 5 percent
for Britons of all ages