Flirting drives messaging in the UK

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Flirting drives messaging in the UKResearchers have found that as many as 300 billion electronic messages will be sent in the United Kingdom in 2014. Many of those messages, for better or for worse, are the result of sexting and flirting. As free services like iMessage and Facebook Messenger make messaging more enjoyable and easier, the number of messages sent annually continues to grow.

In 2013, 160 billion messages were sent in the UK alone, so if researchers are correct with their predictions for this year, twice as many messages will be sent.

“Teenage romance is appropriating technology for its needs,” says Deloitte researcher Paul Lee. “A constant among humans is courting and they use different tools to do it. It used to be hanging on the phone, now it’s instant messaging.”

Text messages are only a small part of the total electronic messaging statistic since people are less likely to communicate consistently through text. Researchers with Deloitte say the average person sends seven texts each day, yet they send 46 instant messages every day.

Deloitte says that based upon its research, it appears as though there are some people in the UK, many of whom are teens, who are sending thousands of messages everyday. If that small percentage of users was taken out of the equation, there would be far less total messages sent every year.

Via [The Guardian]

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