19 October 2007
The rise of the mobile phone has led to a new phenomenon which, new research shows, is remarkably widespread - the flirty text message.
Shy Britons too timid for asking for a first date face-to-face or in a phone call have therefore become "all fingers and thumbs" when it comes to flirting, uSwitch says.
The phenomenon, also known as 'flexting', swallows up around £231 million of phone funds in the UK every month working out at around 235 million messages, research from the website shows.
Steve Weller, Head of Communications Services at uSwitch, said: "Such is the joy of text that we are now dependent on our phones for every aspect of our lives, even our love lives.
"We all know that text messaging is popular, but we never knew so much flirting is going on."
However, what might at first seem like a less risky way of entering the dating arena can backfire, with 50% of males and 48% of females saying that they have sent a flext which they later regret.
Luckily, the research has also turned up some handy hints for would-be flexters: those polled for the study said that, on average, they wait for one hour and eight minutes before replying to a flext.
However, the point at which 'playing it cool' becomes 'plain rude' to flexters, two hours and thirty minutes, was also measured by uSwitch.
© 2008 Adfero Ltd
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