Some 83 percent of American adults own cell phones and three-quarters of them (73 percent) send and receive text messages, according to The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.
According to the Pew, the survey found that overall, both text messaging and phone calling on cell phones have leveled off for the adult population as a whole. Text messaging users send or receive an average of 41.5 messages on a typical day, with the median user sending or receiving 10 texts daily. Both figures are largely unchanged from what Pew reported in 2010.
Similarly, cell owners make or receive an average of 12 calls on their cells per day, which is also unchanged from 2010.
Fully 31 percent of texters surveyed said they preferred texts to talking on the phone, while 53 percent said they preferred a voice call to a text message. Another 14 percent said the contact method they prefer depends on the situation.
Young adults are the most avid texters by a wide margin. Cell phone owners between the ages of 18 and 24 exchange an average of 109.5 messages on a normal day, which calculates out to more than 3,200 texts per month. The typical or median cell owner in this age group sends or receives 50 messages per day (or 1,500 messages per month).
These results come from a nationally representative phone survey of 2,277 adults ages 18 and older conducted from April 26 to May 22, 2011, including 755 cell phone interviews.