Britons 'send 200 texts a month'

Text messaging is now the most popular form of daily communication between British adults, new figures have shown.

After years of increased use, the amount of time British adults spend speaking on a mobile phone has dropped for the first time.

But the average Briton now sends 200 texts a month, Ofcom's Communications Market Report found, more than double the figure of four years ago.

Text messaging has overtaken speaking on a mobile phone and face-to-face contact as the most-used method of daily communication between friends and family.

More than half (58%) of UK adults use text messages at least once a day to communicate with family and friends.

This is more than the figure for face-to-face contact (49%), speaking on a mobile phone (47%) and social networking (33%).

Despite the figures, British adults say that they would prefer to meet (67%) or speak on the phone (10%) than communicate by text (5%).

But the trend looks set to continue, with text messaging used by 90% of 16 to 24-year-olds to communicate at least once a day with friends and family, followed by social networking (74%), mobile phone calls (67%) and face-to-face contact (63%).

The time spent on a mobile phone is down for the first time, from 125 billion minutes in 2010 to 124 billion last year, while calls made on landlines continued to drop by 10%.

The report also found that British adults spent 3.3 hours a month social networking on a PC or laptop in 2011, up from 3.1 hours in 2010.