Even with their great affection for the technology, teens still report, on average, spending more time physically with their friends doing social things outside of school than they report interacting with friends through technology. An average youth between ages 12 and 17 reports spending 10.3 hours a week with friends doing social activities outside of school and about 7.8 hours talking with friends via technology like the telephone, email, IM, or text messaging.

Asked in general how they most often communicate with their friends over voice or text, teens report that they use the phone. Close to two-thirds (63%) report calling friends on the phone to talk with them most often, while about one-third (32%) said they most often write messages to their friends. A very small percentage (4%) say they do both equally.

Just more than half of all online teens say they prefer the landline telephone to other methods of communicating with friends. Instant messaging is the next most popular option, with a quarter of online teens reporting that they use it most. Among all online teens, the cell phone is the next most frequent choice, with 12% of all online teens selecting it as their favorite. Regular email is the preference of just 5% of online teens, and text messaging rings in with 3% of online teens saying they use it most.

Even though statistics regarding teens overall use of email and IM have remained stable over the past four years, when asked what they choose to use most often, the telephone still trumps all forms of written communication. With in the written choices, instant messaging consistently beats email, as well as text messaging, as the method of choice for talking with friends.

About 45% of American teens have cell phones. Within this group, teens are slightly more likely to report spending more time talking with friends on landline phones than cell phones. More than half (53%) of cell-phone-owning teens say they spend more time on a landline, compared to 45% of the same group who say they mostly use a cell phone.

Even though the phone is used most often for a variety of conversations, there are some instances where a significant number of teens report that instant messaging, email, or face-to-face conversations would be their preferred mode of communication.

When conversing with friends through the written word, teens prefer instant messaging to almost any other mode of textual communication. Fully 46% of teens say they use IM most often when using written communications to talk to friends. Another third (33%) say they use email to send notes or letters to friends when sending written messages. Fifteen percent of teens say they most often text message (or SMS) with their friends. The remainder said they communicated by the written word some other way, or refused to answer the question.