How Many Texts Are Sent Per Day in 2024? (Full Stats!)
How Many Texts Are Sent per Day in 2024? Billions and Counting
Text messaging has revolutionized communication over the past couple decades. With over 5 billion people around the world now owning mobile phones capable of SMS texting, it has become one of the most widely-used methods for everyday communicating and connecting. Just how popular has texting become? According to experts, a jaw-dropping number of texts are sent each and every day.
Global Text Messaging Statistics
Recent data indicates that a staggering 23 to 27 billion text messages are sent daily worldwide. That translates to over 270,000 text messages transmitted per second when calculated over a 24-hour period!
To put into perspective how large these numbers are, if you were to print out the texts sent per day and laid them end-to-end, they would span over 50 million kilometers. That’s enough to wrap around the Earth more than 1,000 times!
Just considering the United States alone, over 6 billion SMS text messages are sent per day as of 2023 among the country‘s 273 million smartphone owners. For countries with massive populations like India and China, the figures rise even higher, easily into the billions per day.
But how did texting grow to the point of such astronomical numbers? And is there room for SMS messaging to expand still in today‘s modern tech landscape? By exploring text messaging usage trends and statistics in detail, while uncovering exactly who is texting the most, we‘ll find out!
The Rise of Texting: Growth Trends
Text messaging first emerged in the early 1990s but didn‘t gain widespread popularity until the 2000s when mobile phones became more advanced and affordable. As unlimited texting plans were introduced by carriers in the late 2000s, SMS usage boomed. By 2010, the number of texts sent started to outnumber phone calls. And now in the 2020s, texting‘s dominance continues to climb.
Over just the 5-year stretch from 2012 to 2017 alone, the number of texts sent per day jumped a remarkable 7,700% up to 20 billion. Expectedly, this meteoric rise has begun to slow down and plateau out slightly in more recent years as other messaging apps continue encroaching. However, SMS texting still experiences steady single to low double-digit annual growth.
Diving deeper into the demographics behind the texting surge reveals which groups have led the way over the years.
Text Messaging Demographics: WhoTexts the Most?
Age
A recent study polling over 4,000 Americans sheds light on how texting frequency correlates with age. Results show individuals aged between 35 and 44 send and receive the highest text volume. This makes sense considering people in this age group were among the first to adopt texting as it rolled out on phones in the late 90s during their late teens and college years. They effectively grew up with the technology.
Following close behind are 25 to 34-year-olds who are similarly text-savvy, having had cell phones from a very young age. At the other end of the spectrum, seniors over 65 text noticeably less, averaging just around 100 SMS messages per month versus 900-1000 for Millenials and Gen Z‘ers. Though that may change over time as elderly populations continue getting introduced to smartphones.
Ultimately, experts predict the 35 to 44 demographic will retain the lead in texting simply because studies show Gen Z teenagers actually now tend to prefer alternative messaging apps instead for their frequent digital conversations. Though most still regularly text family and friends not on those newer platforms.
Gender
Looking at text habits by gender reveals a split with women sending more messages daily than men. Around 62% of women state they text “a lot” or more versus 45% for males according to a 2022 survey.
Deeper analysis shows younger women driving this gap – those aged 18 to 34. Over a third of the time women in this age bracket spend on their phones is attributed to texting. Theories behind why range from women potentially having larger, more intimate social circles that necessitate more communication to texting’s perceived safety and control over unwanted advances compared to calls.
Geographical Location
Zooming back out to analyze SMS messaging patterns by geography, certain countries and regions lead the way by a wide margin…
What‘s Fueling the Non-Stop Texting?
Now that we know which groups are sending the most texts, the next question becomes what‘s causing this non-stop texting phenomenon in the first place? Turns out, several major factors are driving the demand side of the texting equation.
Convenience
Phone calls require both parties to be free and engaged at the exact same time. For increasingly busy mobile phone owners, texting offers more flexibility – enabling conversations to happen asynchronously on one‘s own schedule. SMS messaging works whether recipients have a few seconds or hours to reply.
Intimacy and Control
Unlike with verbal phone calls, users feel text conversations come with less pressure, anxiety and vulnerability on emotional topics. The physical distance and time to carefully draft messages can create a comforting barrier. People open up easier through text about more personal issues ranging from relationships and family to mental health and beyond.
Safety
For similar reasons, women in particular may prefer texting to unsolicited calls from strangers or vague recent acquaintances given risks of unwanted advances. The built-in buffer zone allows unwanted messages to go ignored or blocked altogether.
Bridging Long Distance Communications
Texting also provides a less disruptive, lower commitment way for friends, family and romantic partners living far apart to exchange quick messages daily showing they care and are thinking about each other. Though the long distance gap means they likely can‘t connect face-to-face or schedule phone dates frequently.
Businesses Texting Takes Off Too
Beyond person-to-person communications, companies and organizations have also realized major benefits leveraging SMS messaging to engage customers and even employees.
Over 50% of leading digital retailers alone now use texting services to share promotions, content, login credentials and two-factor authentication codes with signed-up subscribers. Customer response rates to these opt-in texts average a remarkable 40 percent.
[More stats and analysis on business/marketing adoption of text messaging for customer communications and trends in this space]What Does the Future Hold for Texting?
Given texting clearly continues strongly dominating mobile messaging year after year, will the technology remain popular going forward long-term?
Prognosticators believe texting still has room to run over the next decade before peaking thanks to a few ongoing movements. Developing countries with rising middle classes jumping to smartphones stands out as the largest potential growth driver for global SMS volume.
But eventually alternative internet-based messaging apps like WhatsApp or iMessage may start fully catching up as mobile data networks expand alongside upgrade cycles on both smartphones and wireless infrastructure.
Slowly but surely online messaging could displace SMS texts much like emailing displaced physical letters over the past 20 years. Though likely not fully for awhile given how deeply ingrained text messaging habits now exist across most demographics.
The Takeaway: Texting is Here to Stay
All said, while minor ebbs and flows continue in the space, clearly mobile users across age groups and geographies simply cannot put down texting anytime soon.
Tallying up current adoption, text messaging represents the most frequently leveraged smartphone feature today above even phone calls or social networking. On average, over 20 texts are still sent monthly for every call placed as just one data point highlighting this prioritization.
So for now, those hundreds of billions of SMS messages will almost certainly keep transmitting each day, fueling conversations around the world. Our global text tally counts ever higher by the minute!
