Adults Adopt Texting to Contact Kids

A new survey commissioned by Sprint shows older Americans texting more frequently to stay in contact with their kids, who respond more quickly to text messages.

Text messaging may be primarily the world of teenaged mallrats and iPhone-addicted 20-somethings, but a new survey from Sprint shows that older Americans are getting on board with the trend as well. While only 13 percent of Americans aged 50 to 64 used text messaging two years, ago, that number has grown to 20 percent more recently.

The shift toward adult text messaging seems to be driven by adults texting their children to stay in touch. Of those who did report texting, 76 percent use it to send messages to their kids, probably because data also suggests children response faster – usually immediately or within minutes.

“This research confirms the anecdotal information we’ve been hearing from parents: Their children respond faster to text messages than to voice messages,” said Sprint senior VP of retail Kim Dixon, in a statement. “It is pretty clear that the increasing rate of text adoption in recent years is fueled by our children altering how we stay in touch with them.”

The survey was conducted by earlier this month by Opinion Research Corporation with a sample size of 2,010 adults.