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Interestingly more teenagers feel that they spend too much time on their phone than they do using social media or playing video games, but fewer have tried to cut back on their usage at some point in the past.

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survey of parents in the United States found that 72 percent of them often or sometimes feel like their teenage kid is distracted by his or her phone when having a conversation.

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mobile phones in its 2004 Teens and Parents project when a survey showed that 45% of teens had a cell phone. 

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mobile phones in its 2004 Teens and Parents project when a survey showed that 45% of teens had a cell phone. 

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Since that time, mobile phone use has climbed steadily among teens ages 12 to 17 – to 63% in fall of 2006 and then to 71% in early 2008.

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In comparison, 77% of all adults (and 88% of parents) had a cell phone or other mobile device at a similar point in 2008.

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Among teens, age is the most important variable in mobile phone ownership.

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Older teens are much more likely to own phones than younger teens

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Among 12-13 year olds, 52% had a cell phone in 2008. Mobile phone ownership jumped to 72%

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Girls and boys are equally likely to own a phone and there are no differences by race or ethnicity in phone ownership.

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For teens as a whole, landline phones remain the most widespread method of communication with friends. Fully 88% of all teens

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94% of them have used their mobile phones to call friends and 76% have sent text messages.

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For daily activities, cell phone-based communication is dominant, with nearly 2 in 5 teens sending text messages every day.

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teens’ daily lives, with 32% of teens saying they use them to make calls on a daily basis.

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At that point in time, 45% of teens had a cell phone and 10% of them said they used it to go online.

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That same year 7% of teens had a PDA (Palm Pilot, Blackberry, Sidekick) and just two percent of them used it to go online.

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Girls ages 12-17 are more likely than boys to use any kind of phone for voice calling.

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The older the teen, the more likely she uses her phone frequently.

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More than seven in ten 17-year-olds with phones talk to friends on their cell phones daily, while just 28% of 12-year-olds with phones say the same.

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A large percentage of phone-owning younger teens ages 12-14 say that they talk to friends at least once a week – 18% of those ages 12-14  report weekly cell phone use, while 10% of  those ages 15-17 do.

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older and younger teens are just about as likely to talk every day.

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If anything, landline phone use shows a slight increase during the mid-teen years (ages 14-16) and then drops off again as teens near the end of high school.

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Face to face conversations outside of school rise modestly with age, from 22% of 12 year olds having them daily to 38% of 17 year-olds reporting daily face-to-face interactions outside of school.

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Use of text messaging by teens has increased since 2006,

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n 2006, 51% of all teens, regardless of cell phone ownership, had ever sent a text message, while 58% had done so by 2008.

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Girls are more likely than boys to send and receive text messages frequently

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25% of teens ages 12-14 send text messages daily compared 51% of teens ages 15-17. As with phone ownership and other uses of mobile devices,

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here are no racial or ethnic differences when it comes to text messaging.

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Text messages aren’t just sent via phones – texts may be sent on desktops or laptops

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Among social network users, 54% of teens on those sites send IMs or text messages to friends through the social networking system.

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Even though the focus of this piece has been on mobile phones, teens have access to other mobile devices that connect them to other people and other networks.

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These mobile gaming devices are also more likely to be owned by boys,