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Text and email more popular for communication than mobile phone calls: Nokia

Twitter overtakes Facebook among US teens: survey

A new study conducted by Nokia has found that people are more likely to reach out to their friends and family via text messages or email than with a voice call from a mobile or landline phone.

“When mobile phones were introduced a few decades ago, they were initially designed to allow you to make a call to another person. That was its sole purpose. Now, according to our poll, making calls is far from the most preferred way to communicate with others,” said Nokia’s Adam Fraser in a March 27 post the Nokia Conversations blog.  

More than one out of five people (21.23%) said they preferred to send an SMS when they wanted to contact someone. Email was a close second at 18.72%. Only 17.12% of respondents said they chose to make a voice call from their mobile phone.

Surprisingly, respondents said that they opt to send a message to someone on Facebook over talking face to face. One out of 10 (10.27%) said Facebook was the best way to communicate with someone while 8.68% said the best way to communicate was talking face to face.

Making a voice call from a landline was well down the list of favored communication methods behind using services such as WhatsApp, Skype, Twitter and instant messengers.

A recent study by the Pew Research Center highlighted a similar trend in communication habits among teens. According to the study, texting has replaced talking on the phone as the most popular form of communication, with teens sending an average of 60 texts per day.

Nokia’s small-scale poll was conducted in March. Nokia did not specify the number of people who participated in the study.