Digital Britain

There are now 74 million mobile phone subscriptions in the UK.
89% of the UK population over the age of 14 have at least 1 mobile phone.
Telecoms analysts Gartner are predicting continued worldwide growth of text messaging and expect 4.1billion messages to be sent in 2010
Gartner is also predicting that by 2013 IM (Instant Messaging) will be the primary interface for real time communications for 95% of the world's major corporations.
The worldwide market for enterprise IM is forecast to grow from $267 million in 2005 to $688 million in 2010.
In the UK in 2008 we sent an average of 81 texts per month
For more indepth less immediate communication email is still popular. Here are the results of a survey on email usage done amongst customers of Talk Talk's broadband customers:
- 86% of customers aged 15-24 years send emails although 51% say email is their first choice of communication
- 87% of customers aged 25-34 send emails
- 96% of customers aged 45-64 send emails
- 98% of customers aged 65+ send emails
Smartphone users are driving an increase in the of emails whilst on the move according to results of research conducted by Neilsen.

o 43% of Blackberry users and 42% of iPhone users in the US and UK reported using email more frequently.

Smartphone use has also driven an increase in the use of email by US college students. Email usage had been declining in this group over the last 5 years but this trend has reversed now that students can access their emails via their phones.
Facebook now has 350 registered users worldwide.
According to figures from Ofcom Britons are more frequent users of social networking sites than any of their European counterparts:
- 25% of British adults use social networking sites
- 17% of French adults use social networking sites
- 12% of German adults use social networking sites
- 22% of Italian adults use social networking sites

Is email/text/Instant Messaging replacing letter writing?

According to a survey of 11,000 Britons 47% of over 50's now write handwritten letters whereas 72% of over 70's write letters by hand.
Only 10% of the UK letters market is classified as "social mail" The number of letters sent through the mail has been declining since 2005. Royal Mail figures predict that this downward trend will continue at a rate of 1-3% per annum.

Has email/text/IM replacing phone calls?

Research by Ofcom found that in 2007 people in the UK:

Spent 5 minutes per month per head making calls from fixed lines.
Now spend on average 136 minutes per month making mobile telephone calls which is an increase of 23 minutes over the figure for 2006 .
There are now 74 million mobile phone subscriptions in the UK.
89% of the UK population over the age of 14 have at least 1 mobile phone.

Are electronic forms of communication replacing face to face communication for teenagers?

In a large scale survey of 18,000 young people conducted for MTV and Microsoft 53% of teenagers said they preferred face-to-face contact with their friends.
The report writers concluded that technology itself is not interesting for teenagers; all it is doing is giving them an alternative method to do the things they already enjoyed doing.
When asked what they enjoy doing the top answers were listening to music, watching TV or DVD's and hanging out with friends, which is just the same as the favourite activities from 20 years ago. The difference is that now the listening to music may be done via a PC or MP3 player and watching TV may again be on a PC or via a digital TV "catch up tv" service.
58% of the young people surveyed said that they use online social networks weekly and they normally talk to existing friends when they are online. The use of this kind of technology peaks in the mid teen years when young people have less freedom than older teens to get out and about to meet with friends face to face than older teenagers have.

Sources:

Saga Magazine April 2009

Internet in Britain 2009 OxIS Oxford Internet institute