Texting statistics 2026: how many texts a day, and how fast people reply

Americans exchanged nearly 2.2 trillion SMS and MMS text messages in 2024, according to the wireless industry association CTIA, and Google reported more than a billion RCS messages a day in the US by May 2025; iMessage and WhatsApp messages aren’t in either figure. The most recent neutral count of texts per person is old: in 2011, Pew found the median adult texter sent or received 10 texts a day, and 18- to 24-year-olds a median of 50. We found no recent, independent measure of everyday reply speed; the newest figure comes from a 2026 survey by EZ Texting, an SMS marketing company, in which 82% of 959 US consumers said they reply within 15 minutes, a figure the company applies to texts from businesses.

Below is a summary table you can quote, then the context for each figure: who measured it, when, how many people, and what it can’t tell you. Every number links to its primary source. At the end we list the popular texting “statistics” we couldn’t trace to any study.

Texting statistics at a glance

Last checked 20 October 2026. “Old” marks data published more than two years before October 2026: useful as history, but not as “the current number”. Company figures (Google, Meta) can change every quarter, so quote the date with the number.

Statistic	Figure	Source	Date
SMS and MMS messages exchanged in the US in a year	Nearly 2.2 trillion (about 42 billion more than the year before)	CTIA Annual Survey (US wireless providers)	2024 data, published September 2025
RCS messages sent per day in the US	More than 1 billion (28-day average)	Google	May 2025
Texts sent or received per day by the median adult texter	10 (average 41.5)	Pew Research Center (2,277 US adults)	April–May 2011 (Old)
Texts per day, cell owners aged 18–24	Median 50, average 109.5	Pew Research Center, same survey	April–May 2011 (Old)
Texts per day, median teen texter (12–17)	60 (100 for older girls)	Pew Research Center (799 US teens)	April–July 2011 (Old)
Smartphone owners who texted at least once in a week	97%	Pew Research Center (1,035 US smartphone owners)	November 2014 (Old)
Texters who prefer a text to a call	31% (53% prefer a call)	Pew Research Center	April–May 2011 (Old)
18- to 29-year-olds who texted “a lot” the previous day	More than two-thirds	Gallup (1,015 US adults)	September 2014 (Old)
Adults with close friends who text one at least a few times a week	61% (72% of under-30s)	Pew Research Center (6,204 US adults)	September 2024, published January 2025
Say they check a new text immediately	32%, and another 40% within 5 minutes	EZ Texting vendor survey (959 US consumers)	Published April 2026
Say they reply to a text immediately / within 15 minutes	25% / 82%	EZ Texting, same survey	Published April 2026
Measured median time before a new message is seen	6.15 minutes	Pielot et al., CHI 2014 (24 Android users, two weeks)	Spring 2013 (Old)
Dating: first message answered within 24 hours	72% more likely to lead to a date	Hinge (Hinge’s own data)	2023 data, published May 2024 (Old)
Reported losses to scams that started with a text	$470 million, more than five times the 2020 figure	Federal Trade Commission	2024 data, published April 2025

How many texts are sent in the US?

Nearly 2.2 trillion SMS and MMS messages in 2024, the latest year with a published count. That’s the old-style carrier texting; a growing share of messages now travels outside it.

• SMS and MMS: CTIA’s 2025 Annual Survey Highlights report that Americans exchanged nearly 2.2 trillion SMS and MMS messages in 2024, nearly 42 billion more than in 2023 and more than in any other year except 2020. By our arithmetic (2.2 trillion ÷ 365), that’s roughly 6 billion a day. CTIA’s survey collects data from wireless providers; for the end-2024 round it aggregated companies serving more than 98% of US wireless connections (CTIA methodology). CTIA’s 2026 highlights, published in September 2026, report data traffic for 2025 but no text count, so 2024 is still the latest figure.
• RCS: Google said in May 2025 that more than a billion RCS messages are sent every day in the US alone, based on a 28-day average (Google). iPhones can send RCS from iOS 18, with a carrier that supports it (Apple).
• iMessage: not in any public count. Apple describes iMessage as messages sent between Apple devices over Wi-Fi or cellular data, while SMS and MMS are services provided by carriers (Apple). Apple publishes no regular iMessage counts.
• Messaging apps: WhatsApp, Telegram and Instagram run over the internet too. The rare volume figure is a peak, not a total: Meta said WhatsApp hit an all-time record of 30 million messages sent per second during the July 2026 World Cup Final (Meta earnings call, 29 July 2026). Usage figures for each app are on our messaging app statistics page.

So when someone quotes “how many texts are sent a day”, ask which kind. The carrier count is solid but leaves out the blue bubbles, and nobody publishes a total across all of them.

How many texts does a person send a day?

There’s no current, neutral figure. The last one we found comes from Pew’s 2011 survey, and the newer “per person” numbers in circulation that we checked had no stated source or method.

What Pew found in 2011 (phone survey of 2,277 US adults, 26 April to 22 May 2011; Pew):

• 73% of cell phone owners sent and received text messages.
• Texters sent or received an average of 41.5 messages a day, but the median was 10. The gap means a minority of heavy texters pulls the average up; the median is the better picture of a typical person.
• 18- to 24-year-old cell owners averaged 109.5 messages a day, with a median of 50.
• Both overall figures were largely unchanged from Pew’s 2010 survey.

Teens texted more. In Pew’s survey of 799 US teens aged 12 to 17 (19 April to 14 July 2011), the median teen texter sent 60 texts a day, up from 50 in 2009; older girls sent a median of 100. Some 63% of all teens exchanged texts every day, far more than used any other form of daily contact (Pew, March 2012).

By 2014, texting was close to universal among smartphone owners. In a Pew study that surveyed smartphone owners twice a day for a week (10 to 16 November 2014; results are based on the 1,035 who completed at least 10 of the 14 surveys), 97% used text messaging at least once, making it the most widely used feature. On average they reported texting in the past hour in 7 of the 14 surveys (Pew, April 2015).

Why no newer number? Our explanation, not a finding: “a text” no longer means one thing. A person’s messages are now split across SMS, RCS, iMessage, WhatsApp, Instagram and more, carriers only see the first two, and asking people to estimate their total gets you a guess about a mix of apps. Any per-person figure dated 2020 or later should say which messages it counted and how. The ones we checked didn’t.

How fast do people reply to texts?

We found no neutral, recent study of how fast people reply to everyday personal texts. Here’s what does exist, and how much weight each deserves.

Source	What it measured	Finding	Caveats
EZ Texting, published 13 April 2026	What 959 US consumers said about their own habits	32% check a new text immediately and another 40% within 5 minutes; 87% have seen it within 15 minutes; 25% reply immediately and 82% within 15 minutes	Vendor survey by an SMS marketing company. Self-reported. Ages, fieldwork dates and question wording aren’t published. The report is about texts from businesses, and its FAQ applies both the read and the reply figures to business texts
Pielot et al., CHI 2014	Logged phone data from 24 Android users aged 22–43 in Europe and North America, two weeks in spring 2013, 6,423 message notifications	Median of 6.15 minutes before a new message was seen	Measures seeing, not replying. Tiny sample, 2013 phones. Asked about their habits, half the participants said they usually reply within a few minutes and half within an hour
Rendle-Short, Discourse and Communication, 2015	329 texting interactions	Replies to requests or invitations that came more than a minute late were much more likely to be refusals	About invitations, not reply speed in general
Hinge, May 2024	Hinge’s own 2023 app data, plus a study by Hinge researchers	Matches whose first message got a reply within 24 hours were 72% more likely to lead to a date; 44% of daters in the study named lack of responsiveness as a top dating challenge	From the app maker, with no sample published for the study. Dating matches, not texting between friends

Read together: people say they reply fast, the one logging study found messages were seen within minutes, and slow replies get read as a signal. What we don’t have is a measured, population-wide “average reply time”. For practical reply windows by relationship and type of message, see how long is too long to reply to a text.

Who texts the most?

Young adults, by every measure we found, and women more than men when it comes to texting close friends.

• Age, 2011: 18- to 24-year-olds sent or received a median of 50 texts a day, against 10 for all adult texters (Pew).
• Age, 2014: more than two-thirds of 18- to 29-year-olds said they sent and received texts “a lot” the previous day, as did nearly half of 30- to 49-year-olds. Across all ages, texting, using a cellphone and email were each used “a lot” by 37% to 39% of Americans (Gallup telephone poll of 1,015 adults, 9–10 September 2014; Gallup).
• Age and gender, 2024: among US adults with close friends, 72% of under-30s text one at least a few times a week, the highest of any age group, and women are more likely than men to text close friends that often (Pew, January 2025).

Do people text more than they call?

Yes, for keeping up with friends, although calling hasn’t disappeared.

Pew’s survey of 6,204 US adults (3–15 September 2024) asked people with close friends how they stay in touch at least a few times a week (Pew):

How they connect with a close friend at least a few times a week	Share
Texting	61%
Social media	39%
Phone or video call	35%
In person	29%

Stated preference is a different question, and the newest neutral data we found on it is old. In 2011, 31% of texters said they preferred a text to a phone call, 53% preferred a call and 14% said it depends; among people exchanging more than 50 texts a day, 55% preferred a text (Pew). And young people still call: in Pew’s 2014 week-long study, 93% of smartphone owners aged 18 to 29 used voice or video calling at least once (Pew).

If texting is how your friendships run, rhythm matters more than volume. Our guides on how often to text your friends and how to keep in touch with friends as an adult turn that into a routine, and our friendship and loneliness statistics cover the wider picture.

How common are text message scams?

Common enough that reported losses have grown more than fivefold since 2020. People told the Federal Trade Commission they lost $470 million to scams that started with a text in 2024, more than five times the 2020 figure, even as the number of reports fell (FTC, April 2025). The FTC notes that most frauds are never reported, so the real figure is likely much higher.

The five most-reported text scams in 2024, per the FTC:

1. Fake package delivery problems
2. Phony job opportunities
3. Fake fraud alerts
4. Bogus notices about unpaid tolls
5. “Wrong number” texts that aren’t

Numbers that don’t exist (and why you see them anyway)

Search for texting statistics and you’ll find confident figures with no study behind them. These are the ones we tried and failed to trace to a published source with a method, a sample and a date:

• “The average American sends 94 texts a day” (and similar round numbers). We found no survey behind these figures. The real figures they may echo, Pew’s 41.5 average and median of 10, are from 2011 and covered only adults who text.
• “People reply to a text within 90 seconds.” It circulates mostly on SMS marketing sites, usually without a source and sometimes next to a CTIA citation. CTIA’s published survey highlights for 2025 and 2026 count messages and data, not reply times. The reply-speed figures with a stated method that we found are the self-reported EZ Texting survey and the 24-person logging study above.
• “98% of texts are opened.” A staple of SMS marketing material. We found no published study with a method, and marketing texts aren’t personal texts anyway.
• “The normal number of texts a day in a relationship.” No study we found measures it, and couples text so differently that an average would tell you little. Our guide to how often couples should text covers what the research does look at.
• A worldwide total of “texts” across every app. Carriers count SMS and MMS, Google has published a US figure for RCS, and Apple publishes no regular iMessage figures. A single global number has to be an estimate, and should say whose.

Why they spread: statistics round-up pages copy each other, numbers get re-dated each year without new data, and companies that sell texting services have a reason to make texting look fast and universal. None of that makes every such number false, but a figure with no named study, sample or date isn’t one to repeat.

Measure your own texting habits

National averages won’t tell you whether you’re slow to reply to one particular friend. If you want your own numbers, the free chat analyzer from the makers of Tera Chat for Mac reads a WhatsApp chat export, a Telegram Desktop JSON export or the JSON messages from Instagram’s “Download your information”, and shows each person’s typical (median) reply time, who starts conversations, double texts and the days and hours you talk most. The file is read on your own device and never uploaded. It doesn’t read iMessage. To find out who you talk to most across apps, see how to see who you text the most.

How we checked: on 20 October 2026 we opened every source linked above: CTIA’s 2025 and 2026 survey highlights and methodology summary, Google’s RCS announcement, Apple’s iMessage, RCS and SMS support page, the Pew reports from 2011, 2012, 2015 and January 2025, Gallup’s 2014 poll, the EZ Texting 2026 report, the Pielot et al. paper, the Rendle-Short abstract, Hinge’s May 2024 release, Meta’s July 2026 earnings call transcript and the FTC’s April 2025 data spotlight. Figures are copied as published; the only calculation of ours is the per-day SMS estimate, marked as such. We’ll update this page when CTIA, Pew or another independent source publishes newer data.