Mobile consultancy, iGR's recent study on the
content of consumers' text messages shows some major life situations are occurring via cell phone SMS text messages.
The survey asked respondents a
series of questions regarding the purpose of text messages they
sent and received in the past month.
Nine percent of U.S. consumers have sent a text intended to end a
relationship with a partner or cancel a date.Seven percent of the
consumers have received such a text message in the past month.
18 to 24 year olds are more
likely to break up through a text message or to cancel a date via text
than their older counterparts. Additionally, more male consumers than
females reported both sending and receiving 'goodbye' messages.
However, consumers do not only use text messaging to break bad news.
iGR's survey found 1 percent of U.S. consumers have proposed marriage
to someone via a text message - the good news is that an equivalent
number received the proposal!
One percent of women have sent a text to tell their partner that
they are pregnant - all of the individuals who received texts stating
that their partner was pregnant were male.
iGR also found that three U.S. consumers - two men and one woman -
have asked their spouse for a divorce via SMS, and two men have
received a text message asking for a divorce, in the past month.
All senders and recipients of the pregnancy and divorce text messages were under 45 years old.
"We included these questions in our survey to see how far people
really would go with text messages," said Iain Gillott, president of
iGR. "It seems that there is no limit to what people will do with SMS!"