I guess it depends on the phone, but on smartphones it doesn't really work even as fast as the instant messengers do. I use Gmail and thus I'm available for chat for other gmail users, and that's pretty much as you type speed communication. SMS messages take seconds at best and minutes at worst to arrive. Annd I suppose it's not usual but on my phone I've sometimes gotten text messages that were sent hours earlier.

I think texting will quickly give way to Gtalk, Skype, Facebook messaging (which seems to me kids at school use the most) and such. But it's just a technical matter, the core of the idea is the same.

And yes, it's just because people are so effin' busy these days, all the day. Always in the middle of doing something. I have a few moments in my day that I'm not busy and would have time to chit-chat over the phone; one is in the morning between six and seven or so, give or take 30 minutes, when I wake up with the kid and everyone else is asleep. That's mostly when I write and read on forums like TheFret.

Similarly I have another hour or a little less from 8 to 9 pm when I'm putting the kids to bed, and that's also good time for forums. Or maybe mobile gaming.

All that basically means, though, that on a typical day I will communicate HUGELY more on online forums than with any real person, if you don't count in the talking in class to pupils I suppose. Naah, even then I probably write much more words than speak during the day.