R u kidding me? Americans punched out more than 110 billion text messages last year, double the number in the previous year and growing, as the shorthand communication becomes a popular alternative to cell phone calls.
The nation's 270 million cell phone subscribers each sent out an average of 407 text messages in 2008, according to government statistics released Tuesday by the Census Bureau. That's more than double the 188 messages sent by the average cell subscriber in 2007. The figures did not break down the texting by age, but the overall numbers understate the thousands of texts sent each month by many teens - balanced out by older folks who don't text as much.
