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.