The changing face of the teen cellphone landscape
While the tech industry rages over the choice between Verizon- or AT&T-supported iPads, a new Nielsen study shows how teens are contributing to the cellphone and smartphone market. The new report found that teens are responsible for the most texting, with an average teen sending out a message every 10 minutes. The rate and number decrease drastically in the larger age groups. 43 of teens say that texting is their primary use for a phone.This causes most teens to seek out QWERTY-phones rather than touch screens, as most smartphones have. BlackBerry offers a similar method of communication on its devices, known as BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), which also lets users include video and voice recordings. Is this feature winning over customers from other age brackets, though? Given the decrease in messaging shown by the Nielsen study, and the fact that BBM only works between two Blackberry phones, we’d guess probably not. It will be interesting to see how these trends continue, and whether BBM offers a credible threat to text messaging technology.The trend does spell bad news for teen drivers and others on the road with them. State laws haven’t had much effect on lowering texting while driving, and may even be more dangerous, causing teens to hold the phone lower than they would normally. With the risk of a crash while texting 23 times higher, this is an issue that will continue to make headlines until a solution is discovered.