UK mobile users are using text-based communications more than phone calls or face-to-face meetings to keep in touch, according to research from telecom regulator Ofcom. The average UK consumer sent 50 text messages per week in 2011, more than double the figure of four years ago, with 150 billion texts sent during the year.

For the first time ever, the number of phone calls being made on mobile and fixed lines declined, with the volume of mobile calls falling by slightly more than 1 percent in 2011.

Young adults are driving this change, as they increasingly socialise online and via text messaging. Ofcom’s Communications Market Report 2012 found that 96 percent of people aged 16 to 24 are using some form of text-based application daily, with 90 percent using text messages and 73 percent, social network sites.  Within this age group, 67 percent make a mobile phone voice call daily.

More than a third (39 percent) of UK adults own a smartphone, up 12 percentage points on 2010. As a result, the time spent accessing the internet from mobile devices increased by a quarter year on year, with the volume of mobile data consumed doubling in the 18 months to January 2012.

According to Ofcom, there were 81.6 million mobile subscriptions in the UK by the end of 2011, with 92 percent of adults owning a mobile phone.