Brits’ love for instant messaging services will result in double the number of messages sent this year as compared to last year, a new research study claims.
According to a study by Deloitte, UK teenagers and young adults use free instant messaging services like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and iMessage to send more than 270 updates per day and up to 100,000 electronic messages a year.
The research study figured out that by this year’s Christmas end, a total of 300 billion messages will be across the UK as compared to 160 billion sent in 2013.
Deloitte’s latest study found that the trend is spurred by young love.
Paul Lee, Deloitte technology, media and telecoms research head, commenting on the research study said teenage romance is what driving technology for its needs is. There are different tools humans use while in courting, earlier it was phone calls and now it’s instant messaging, Lee said.
An interesting thing to note is that researchers found that Brits on an average send a maximum of seven text messages a day, but the average number for instant messaging goes up to 46 a day about three per waking hour (assuming a typical person stays awake for 16 hours).
In the study report, to be released next month, Deloitte estimates that a small percentage of UK people are super-users, with about half a million of young users sending several thousands of messages every month.
Last year, the volume of instant messages (IMs) exceeded the old fashioned text with 145bn texts sent, while this year texting is expected to plunge to 140bn, the research firm said.
[Source: The Guardian]
