As an example, Mogreet (www.mogreet.com) provide a service for consumers to send video text messages from the web or from a cell phone. The result is just as private and unseen by parents and demonstrates greater expansion of utility for cellphones and text messaging.

Look at information bandwidth alone – How much bidirectional info goes between both parties in an average phone call vs a back-and-forth text exchange?

Add that on top of the ability to do one-offs to anyone they know, anytime someone’s bored for more than 3 seconds, but less than 5 minutes for a call?

Not a big shock, but a neat stat all the same.

It’s just a more convenient, private, interrupt-friendly way of doing the same thing.

To me, the more interesting stat would be one that we couldn’t really get:

By what factor is text augmenting communication (communication that wouldn’t have happened otherwise) as opposed to replacing it (replacing conversations with texts)?

My total non-statistics opinion is that it’s doing some replacement of conversations for privacy and noise reasons, sure, but I’d bet the majority is augmentation: Added info exchange, between more people — conversations wouldn’t have happened without the technology existing.

That’s the part that makes it really interesting to me – more people saying more things to more people than they would have otherwise.

Teachers also can’t hear you text. And you can read text in a noisy environment where you can’t hear a phone call. My question is, does that explain the entire 7.5 multiple?