Pub. 4 2014 Issue 2

20 AT THE CENTER OF UTAH INDUSTRY TEXTING: 2DAY’S QUICK & EZ WAY 2 COMMUNICATE I n June 2010, about 293 million people had a cell-phone in the U.S. That is more than 93 percent of the people in this country. f you have a cell phone, then you probably use it to send text messages; most people do. About 73 percent of people with cell phones send text messages, and the percentage is higher for people who are younger. The average number of text messages someone receives in a day is 41.5 messages. Texting has even become a basic part of major sporting events such as the Super Bowl. AT&T reported that during Super Bowl 46 in 2012, 722,296 text messages were sent or received. In 2011, experts believe about seven trillion messages were sent. The origins of text messaging For something that is considered to be such a ubiquitous way of communicating, texting hasn’t been around for very long. Today, of course, text messages have become a huge part of having a cell phone. While many of the world’s younger “texters” have always lived in a texting world, most adults remember life without communication constantly at their fingertips. The first text message ever sent was on December 3, 1992 by a 22-year-old test engineer to his boss. It was a message that would be very typical among texts today: “Merry Christmas.” It marked a permanent change in the way the world communicates. The following years saw a slow growth in text message use, with customers sending an average of only 0.4messages per month in 1995. In 2008, for the first time, the number of text messages being sent was larger than the number of cell calls being made. Americans today still are more likely to send text messages than talk on their phones. Beryllium When cell phones were originally invented, they were big and clunky.