The research studies the relationship that exists between the ages of individuals and the number of texts they send on a daily basis. Cell phones offer people the comfort of contacting other people in accurate immediacy. However, to some people, the cell phone is a tool for both pleasure and a social habit. It is imperative to understand why certain people are more engaged in texting than others and what prompts the circumstance as it holds. Research provides that the older people in society are less involved in texting over the social media platforms than the younger people.
The aim of the following research as earlier mentioned is to study the relationship that exists between the age of individuals and the number of texts they send every day. A study was undertaken and results collected in regards to the issue. The following paper will thus provide an analysis of the results and study them after carefully conducting a regression analysis of the same. The paper will thus demonstrate and argue to the hypothesis that younger people are more involved in texting than the older people because they belong to the generation that has grown up in cell phones thus fancy them as the means of communication unlike the older people. It concludes in regards to the same and offers a summary of the research findings and discussion pertaining to the found data from the research gatherings.
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Introduction
Cell phones were initially used for the purpose of giving the luxury of immediate contact with other people such as friends, family and relatives regardless of time and place of the people connecting with others. However, the phone users have made texting a habit that has seen the cell phone change from a luxury to an appendage. According to (Forgays, 2014), 85% of adults in the United States own a cell phone with 90% living in households having a mobile phone. Forgays (2013) further reports that among the adults, those aged between 18 to 24 years text and call the most with an average of 1299 texts and 981 calls every month. The texting drops in a precipitous nature among certain age groups from 592 to 32 texts on a monthly basis with the call minutes dropping in a similar manner from 952 to 398 per month (Forgays, 2014).
The people aged between 18 and 22 are the first adults to have grown up with accessibility to cell phones and thus can be considered “cell phone natives” (Forgays, 2014). The young adults have not only owned a cell phone but have grown up with them prompting the intense usage of the cell phones for a substantial part of their time. It is observed that the same trend or pattern rather in the cell phone usage spreads across the scope of Japan that has the highest number of cell phone users to china and Australia. The trend thus implies that the younger generation or adults rather are more involved with cell phone usage in terms of texting and calling than the older people. The trend further confirms that the younger generation is more involved with the usage of cell phones in terms of texting than the older generation because they breed from the era of cell phones and thus relate more and better with that style of life.
Method
A study was conducted on a selected group of people ranging from all age groups. Samples of ten was taken for people from each age group specifically those between 18-24, 25-29, 30-34, 35-39, 40-45 and 46-50. The study involved interviewing the people and seeking access to check the number of texts they had sent in a month’s time and further see the average number of texts they send on a daily basis. The data collected was arranged in a table with the ages against the average number of texts sent per day in a span of one month. The data was further counterchecked to ensure it corresponds with the raw data collected and the table was finalized on grounds of measure in regards to the number of persons that participated in the study.
A regression analysis was conducted on the data in a bid to find and determine the relationship that emanates from the perceived trend of age and number of texts sent by users on a daily basis. The average, variance and standard deviation was calculated to further understand or rather appreciate the closeness of the data for the sake of determining the nature of relationship that exists between the ages of individuals and the number of texts they send each and every day. Furthermore, the same was to determine whether the trend holds and thus can be used to predict future usage of cell phones amongst various users in different age brackets in the modern day society that seems to relate perfectly with social networking via such gadgets than face to face contacts.
Results
The number of females under study was 36 and the men were 34. The pie chart below shows the gender distribution of the study:
Below is a chart showing the relationship of female ages and the number of texts they sent per day
Below is a chart of the relationship between ages of men and the number of texts per day
Mean
The mean of texts sent by the men on a daily basis is 124.57 hence 124 texts per day.
The mean of texts sent by the females on a daily basis is 128.67 hence 128 texts per day.
Discussion
The results insist that the men text less than the female on an average basis. This could be due to the fact that the women are more talkative than the men in nature according to ( Mehl, 2007 ). The graphs of age versus texts reveal that there are more texts sent by both the men and the female of ages 17 to 29. A moderate number of texts is sent by both sexes in the 30 to 40 age bracket. The pattern shows that the number of texts sent by both men and females dwindles with age as both record 0 texts for the 70 year olds in both cases.
According to study by Forgays (2014), the young persons aged between 18 and 22 are the cell phone generation and thus relate well with cell phones. Persons in this group are more accustomed to using cell phones as they were born in the era of cell phones thus that is the social norm for them. It is different for the people that were born before the era of cell phones because they are used to other means of conversation and more so the face-to-face conversations. However, there is a particular outlier as it is seen that the men in the 29 to 40 age bracket text more than women in the same bracket. Psychologically this could be because men in this age bracket are more mature and profound and seek to stabilize their relationships whether romantic or business related or even family hence the gap between the two sexes.
Conclusion
Apparently, the number of texts sent by both men and females reduces with adults. The observation is that the older generation do not appreciate well the era of cell phones and thus find them-selves using less of the cell phones for communication as compared to the young generation. It is predicted that the future will have older people having more texts on a daily basis as then they would be the older generation of the cell phone era. The young people will still have more texts but the difference will not be as high as the one observed today.
References
Forgays, D. K., Hyman, I., & Schreiber, J. (2014). Texting everywhere for everything: Gender and age differences in cell phone etiquette and use. Computers in Human Behavior, 31, 314-321.
Mehl, M. R., Vazire, S., Ramírez-Esparza, N., Slatcher, R. B., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2007). Are women really more talkative than men? Science , 317 (5834), 82-82.
