Introduction

Hello and welcome to my blog. In this blog, I will explore the differences in texting habits between different age groups. In this blog you will be able to see relevant studies and research on my topic, how I collected and analyzed my data, and my conclusions on the topic.

I chose this topic because I have grown up around technology and I text every day with my friends. My parents on the other hand, they do not text as much and until a couple months ago, my mother did not know how to text at all. In my research I focused on texting friends and the differences between the ages groups. I looked to see how much each age group texted their friends and looked at the differences. The question that I looked at was “How does texting friends differ between age groups?” This is important because it is interesting to see how the older generation has adopted cell phone technology in their lives and how that compares to people who have had this technology for a majority of their lives.

Below please find the following:

 Introduction to Project

 Annotated Bibliography

 Data, Methods, and Ethics

 Analysis

 Conclusions and Reflection

Annotated Bibliography

Axelsson, Ann-Sofie. "Perpetual and Personal: Swedish Young Adults and Their Use of Mobile Phones." New Media & Society 12.1 (2010): 35-54. Communication Abstracts. Web. 19 Mar. 2013.

In her article, “Perpetual and Personal: Swedish Young Adults and Their Use of Mobile Phones”, Axelsson discusses how those who are 18-24 in Sweden use their cellphones and who they contact with them. The study looked out how much teenagers in Sweden contacted those who were close to them and how much. The result that Axelsson found was that teenagers are always in contact with their friends and family by using their mobile phone. The study also found that teenagers prefer to text over talking on the phone.

Duran, Robert L., Lynne Kelly, and Teodora Rotaru. "Mobile Phones in Romantic Relationships and the Dialectic of Autonomy versus Connection." Communication Quarterly 59.1 (2011): 19-36. Communication Abstracts. Web. 19 Mar. 2013.

In the article, “Mobile Phones in Romantic Relationships and the Dialectic of Autonomy versus Connection”, the authors discussed how romantic partners thought about texting versus calling and how this affected their relationship. The researchers found tension when it came to how much texting and calling the other partner was doing, usually not enough. There was also tension when the partner was texting or calling someone of the opposite sex.

Harley, Dave, Sandra Winn, Sarah Pemberton, and Paula Wilcox. "Using Texting to Support Students' Transition to University." Innovations in Education and Teaching International 44.3 (2007): 229-41.

In the article, “Using Texting to Support Student’s Transition to University”, the authors discuss the importance of having a support system when students are just starting out at university. They look at the pros of having emails that professors send getting sent right to a student’s phone as a text. This allows the students to get the support they need from their professors if they feel they can reach them whenever they need the help. Texting helps the students make the transition into university and get used to the way classes are taught and run.

Irina Kopaneva, et al. "Workplace Friendship in The Electronically Connected Organization." Human Communication Research 38.3 (2012): 253-279. Communication Abstracts. Web. 19 Mar. 2013.

In the article, “Workplace Friendship in the Electronically Connected Organization”, the authors looked to see how coworkers who were friends communicated when they were not at work. They looked at email, phone, and texting as the different ways that coworkers could communicate if they were friends. The study also looked to see how the friendship was started and how they kept up that friendship. The results found that face to face communication was key for the intuition of a friendship, but texting and other technology based forms of communication were good for maintaining the relationship.

Mahatanankoon, P. and O’Sullivan, P. (2008), “Attitude Toward Mobile Text Messaging: An Expectancy-Based Perspective”. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13: 973–992.

In the article, “Attitude Toward Mobile Text Messaging: An Expectancy-Based Perspective”, the authors wanted to see how people felt about text messaging and why it made them feel this way. The attitudes that they have about text messaging is determined through their thoughts about themselves and their self-esteem. The researchers found that if people felt that they were in control, they felt better about text messaging.

O'Connell, Michelle. "To Text or Not To Text": Reticence and the Utilization Of Short Message Services." Human Communication 13.2 (2010): 87-102. Communication Abstracts. Web. 19 Mar. 2013.

In her article, “To Text or Not to Text: Reticence and the Utilization of Short Message Services”, O’Connell discusses people who are reluctant to use technology and how they respond to text messaging. She looked to see if there was a positive effect or a negative effect. The results that she found suggest that these people text the same amount as most others. There was a difference on how many texts were sent to someone who they considered their significant other. There were also differences in types of text messages that people were sending out.

In her report, “Cellphones and American Adults”, Lenhart looked to determine why adults text, how much they text, and who they are texting. The report found that a good majority of the texts were just to say hello to someone who they were friends with and wanted to see how they were doing. Lenhart also found that texting was not used for longer messages, those were for when talking with someone on the phone. The result was that adults do text with people, but still not as much as teenagers use text messaging.  

Ling, Rich. "Should We Be Concerned That the Elderly Don't Text?" Information Society 24.5 (2008): 334-341. Communication Abstracts. Web. 19 Mar. 2013.

In his article, “Should We Be Concerned That the Elderly Don’t Text?” Ling discusses the elderly and how they have or have not adopted text messaging technology. The study looks at whether the elderly do want to text and they just do not know how or if they do not accept text messaging as a medium they want to learn. The study is about how younger people do not text older people because they think that they do not want to text, but some of them really do want to learn and text their family and friends.

Ling, Rich, Troels Fibæk Bertel, and Pål Roe Sundsøy. "The Socio-Demographics Of Texting: An Analysis Of Traffic Data." New Media & Society 14.2 (2012): 281-298. Communication Abstracts. Web. 19 Mar. 2013.

In the article, “The Socio-Demographics of Texting: An Analysis of Traffic Data”, the authors discuss what age group is texting, who they text, and how many people they text. As in other studies, the researchers found that teenagers are the ones who text the most out of all the age groups. They also found that the number of people that they send texts to is pretty small, an average of five people. They determined that texting is important to teenagers and how they socialize with other people in their age group.

Pettigrew, Jonathan. "Text Messaging and Connectedness within Close Interpersonal Relationships." Marriage & Family Review 45.6 (2009): 697-716.

In his article, “Text Messaging and Connectedness within Close Interpersonal Relationships”, Pettigrew discusses what people of think of text messages and how they use them in their interpersonal relationships. Texting can impact personal relationships and Pettigrew wanted to see how this could happen. The study found that people use texting to maintain a closeness that they find in their interpersonal relationships. He also found that people thought that texting was a more private way to get across their message than talking on the phone. 

Data, Methods, and Ethics

Data

As a class, we worked together to create a common questionnaire. Our class wanted to look at social media and how this affected their relationships with the people who are closest to them. We gathered information on demographic characteristics: gender, race/ethnicity, marital status, age, education, religious beliefs, work status, and where people live. We asked questions that had to do with the type of medium that they use to communicate with others and their feelings on the medium. There were also questions about the type of devices that people owned and how often they use them in their daily lives.

We were required to get two people who were under 30, two people who were over 30, and one person who could be in either group. I did the questionnaire as an interview where I sat down with the person and asked them the questions in an interview style and I put the responses into the online questionnaire. I chose people who had the time to sit down with me for the forty minutes the survey took. I conducted the surveys in cafes, my dormitory and the library. I worked with the people who I was interviewing to find a place that they felt comfortable with and they could get to easily.

When building the questionnaire, I found that it was much harder than I originally expected. The basic demographic variables were difficult because we had to make sure we represented every group in our choices without having too many options. The options that we gave the participants were enough to get every facet of a topic covered. We also had to make sure that the questions we created were not biased in any way based in our own opinions. The way the questions were worded was important because we did not want anyone to be offended when they read the question. It is very hard to create good questions because you want to make sure that the questions cover the topic you are focusing on and for each questions, that you have all of the options that are available.

Methods

I was interested in texting, more specifically texting friends and how often each age group did this. I chose to analyze one question that was quantitative. The question is:

Question 1: “How often do you text to communicate with the following?”

Subcategories were: Parents, Siblings, Children, Spouse/Parter, Friends, Colleagues, Neighbors, Religious group, and Other.

Response categories were: Multiple times per day, Multiple times per week, Multiple times per month, Once per day, Once per week, Once per Day, Less often, and Never.

I chose this question because I wanted to look at the texting habits of different age groups and this was the question that would best help me make connections. I specifically wanted to look at how different age groups texted their friends. Previous studies have looked at differences between teenagers and other age groups in regards to texting and who texts more (Lenhart, 2010). I wanted to explore this with a different group of participants. This question was good because I had the potential to look at the ways people text different groups and I decided to only focus on friends because of my own experiences with this.

I performed the following steps to treat the data. First, I got rid of the subcategories that were not friends because I only wanted to focus on how often people texted their friends. Then I got rid of any non-responses because they would not help me when I was trying to analyze the data that I ended up with to use. I decided not to look at gender so I took that out as well which means I was left with age and how often these people texted their friends. I put each age separation into three different groups. I recoded 18-22 year olds as college aged, I recoded 23-29 and 30-49 as adults, and I recoded 50-64 and 65+ as older. I also recoded the response categories to become daily, weekly, monthly, and less often/never.

Using these categories I generated totals and percentages to analyze the data.

The overview of data of how often each age group texts their friends looks like this:

College Aged Daily: 85

College Aged Weekly: 8

College Aged Monthly: 1

College Aged Less often/Never: 1

TOTAL: 95

Adults Daily: 20

Adults Weekly: 5

Adults Monthly: 1

Adults Less often/Never: 1

TOTAL: 27

Older Daily: 11

Older Weekly: 14

Adults Monthly: 9

Adults Less often/Never: 8

TOTAL: 42

Ethics

To make sure that we had informed consent and to let the participants know that they could stop the survey at any time or not answer a question, we read them this:

I am requesting your participation in an interview of approximately thirty minutes for a class project. The questions will include background information such as age and gender as well as questions about political beliefs, news and media consumption, and values. 

The results of the research study will be part of my final research project for a class I am taking this term. The information will only be used in this class by other students and will be published on a website for my final project. At the end of the study, the data will be erased and the website will be removed. 

Your participation in this study is voluntary. All information is anonymous. No names or identifying information is being collected or will be used. Pseudonyms will be used for all data collected. If you do not wish to answer some or all of the questions you are free to say "pass" or "next question" or "decline to state" at any time. At any time you may stop participating, change your mind about answering any questions, and/or withdraw from the study altogether. You may stop the interview at any time, for any reason. 

Do you consent to participate? (YES answer necessary to proceed).

Thank you!

We made sure the participants knew that their names would not be used. Each participant had a specific number that was used to distinguish each set of data. After this class is over, all of the data will be erased and never used again. 

Analysis

After researching and reviewing all of my data, I created these graphs to visually represent the information that I received from the participants.

FIGURE 1: Graphical representation of how often College Age participants Text their Friends

Here we see that college age participants are mostly texting their friends on a daily basis. The number dramatically decreases when it comes to texting friends monthly. Very few people text their friends on a monthly basis, or less often/never. College age participants are texting a lot as seen out and about on campus. Everyone always seems to be on their phones, even when they are with their friends. There were 95 college age participants in the study and 85 of the participants text their friends on a daily basis.

FIGURE 2: Graphical representation of how often Adult participants Text their Friends

Here we see that adult participants are also mostly texting their friends on a daily basis. There are more participants who are texting their friends on a weekly basis. There are still a small amount of participants who only text their friends monthly or less often/never. This age group contains people who are 23-49 and many of them have been around technology for a good amount of their lives and they are more open to new technology. This age group shows that there is more variety in how often they text their friends compared to the college age participants who text their friends on a daily basis.

FIGURE 3: Graphical representation of how often Older participants Text their Friends

Here we see that older participants have more of a variety when it comes to how often they text their friends. The numbers for daily and weekly text communication with their friends is equal. There is a sharp decline between the prior age groups and this age group in regards to how often they text. The older participants do not text their friends on a daily basis as much as the other age groups do. There is also a good proportion of participants who text their friends less often or never. These numbers are higher than those of the other age groups. This could suggest that the participants do not use cell phones or they have cell phones and they choose not to text.

These graphs helped me to see the difference in how often the various age groups text their friends. There was not as much a difference between the college age participants and the adult participants, but there was a drastic difference when compared to the older participants. For the older participants, there is more variety with how often they text their friends. The first two age groups like to text their friends more on a daily basis, but this does not seem as important for the older generation. According to the data, they do not have to text each other every day in order to maintain a friendship. The data that I focused on does not include talking on the phone. This means that the participants in the study could be talking on the phone every day, but I focused on texting and not calling.

I recoded the different categories so it would be easier to look at the differences between the different age group. There were eight response categories and some of the responses only had one or two people to represent it. I was able to get it down to four categories so that I would not get caught up in the little numbers and it would be easy to see the big picture and made the comparisons between the age groups easier to see. I combined the age groups so that there would be more variety for each group. There were also not enough participants in some of the groups for the study to give responses that could actually be used to draw conclusions.

I was not surprised by the results from the first questions because of my own experiences of texting compared to how my parents text. I text my friends every day because I am trying to keep in touch with the ones who I do not get to see every day because we are at different colleges. Texting is an easy way to communicate because it is a quick and effective means by which to figure out how someone is doing and what they have been up to since you last saw them. It is also a good way to make plans when you do not have time to talk on the phone and make the plans. 

Conclusion

I found that those were in the college age and the adult age groups use text messaging to talk to their friends on a daily basis while the older age group had similar numbers for using text messaging to talk their friends on a daily and weekly basis. For the older group, they also had more people who only texted their friends on a monthly basis or even less often/never. The two other age groups had very few people in the monthly and less often/never categories for texting their friends. This data is important because it shows that the older participants actually do text and on a daily basis. We cannot assume that people who are older do not use cell phones or text messaging technology because they did not have it for most of their lives. My dad texts and so do my grandparents, but this is not the same for all people who are their age. This data shows that people who are older can adopt technology and use it to their advantage. My grandparents bought smartphones years before my parents and I switched to smartphones. We were a little late to the game, but they were early adopters. Even though they grew up using other technology to communicate with their friends, it is clear from the data that they see the advantages of using texting to talk to their friends. It is a quick and easy way to communicate and to just say hello without having to pick up the phone and call the person.

In his study, “Should We Be Concerned that the Elderly Don’t Text?” Ling discusses how the elderly do not text. I disagree with this based on what I found in my study. I found that people who are older do text and some text on a daily basis. They take advantage of this technology. To look at this more, another study should focus on the group that is older than 65. In my study, there were not enough people who were over 65 to have their own group. I had to group them in with the 50-64 year olds. Further studies should look at how often people call their friends and not just text messaging to see if that is why they are not texting their friends on a daily basis. I would focus on the older participants because they were the ones who were testing their friends every day and they had the most variety when it came to how often they were texting.

There were some problems with the topic that I focused on because of the number of participants in the study. There were not enough people in my adult group to be able to fully draw conclusions from their data. If I were to do this study again, I would try to get at least 30 participants per group. There were a lot of participants in the 18-22 group and the 50-64, 65+ groups and then very few in the 23-29, 30-49 group. There was a large percentage drop in daily texting between the adult group and the older group and I would like to see where exactly that drop occurs with more specific age group and more participants in each section.