Infographic: The Dark Side of Teen Texting

Texting turned 20 this month, but the cell phone's killer app may be most popular among users who weren't even born when a Finnish team of engineers led by Matti Makkonen invented SMS messaging back in 1992.

Don't tell U.S. teenagers that texting is on the decline. Some 63 percent of them send texts to friends and family on a daily basis, according to a new infographic (below) produced by cell phone signaling firm Wilson Electronics.

They're also extremely prolific on SMS. American teens were sending a whopping 100 texts a day last year, or seven per waking hour, the company reports. Teenage girls were the more text-happy gender, firing off 3,952 texts per month on average as compared with 2,815 for boys.

Teens also appear to largely ignore the previous Internet generation's killer app. While three-quarters of U.S. teenagers say they text, just 6 percent use email.

Why so much texting? Teens answering surveys cited by Wilson had varying reasons for their hyper-dependence on the communication protocol, with around two-fifths saying texting was either "easier" or "faster" than making voice calls and another 18 percent simply saying it was "more fun."

For parents, there's a pretty serious downside to all this teen texting, however. A full 28 percent of polled teens said they had sent fully nude photos of themselves over SMS. About a quarter of American teenagers participate in "sexting," according to Wilson's sources, which include research firms like Nielsen and Pew, as well as media and government organizations.

Unsurprisingly, boys are "more than twice as likely to ask for 'sexts' than girls," according to the report.

Attitudes towards randy teenagers may differ among parents, but you'd be hard pressed to find any who endorse the dangerous practice of fumbling around on a smartphone while cruising down the highway. Here's some bad news on that front—almost half of teens aged 16-17 say they text while driving. And almost half of kids aged 12-17 say they've been in a vehicle with a driver who was texting.

That's twice as many as the number who say they engage in "sexting," which may be a socially dangerous practice but isn't likely to kill you outright.