KEY POINTS:
'AZ IF u ddnt knw it alrdy': mobile phones and social networking sites like Facebook have near-revolutionised the way Kiwis communicate.
A new Vodafone survey, released today, shows we are a bunch of raging textaholics who rely on our mobiles in every sector of our lives.
The online poll, conducted in honour of the communication giant's 10th year in the New Zealand market, reveals a communications world changed markedly since the days when mobiles were called "yuppie phones".
We now used our handsets for everything from doing the banking and paying for parking, to downloading music and finding and/or dumping partners, the survey found.
For close to three-quarters of us (73.8 per cent), calls to mobiles or text messages were the preferred way to keep in touch with friends. The landline was only a favourite for a measly 3.1 per cent, beaten by email (14.2 per cent) and social networking sites (4.7 per cent).
More than 22 per cent of respondents had upgraded their mobile handsets between 6 and 10 times, and 9 per cent of respondents claimed to have found true love on the internet.
Just under half (44.2 per cent,) of survey respondents said they'd asked for a date via a text message, and 20 per cent had caught someone cheating with the aid of text evidence.
At the extreme end of the scale, two survey respondents said they'd chosen texting as the preferred medium for marriage proposal, while another two had been fired from employment via a text.
Paul Brislen, of Vodafone NZ, said there was no doubt communications technology had brought with it a "cultural shift", that had changed the way we interacted.
People were now commonly using their phone instead of landline phones, address books, stereo systems, cameras and photo albums, he said.
As a nation, we had a particular affection for texting, he said. New Zealanders send at least 600 million a month, statistics showed.
Brislen said Kiwis were "early adaptors" of the texting technology.
"It just went off. It's now quite normal to be sitting at the pub with friends and everyone has their phones out texting, while at the same time holding a conversation."
This contrasted with other markets such as the US, where "It's only in the past two years that they have even noticed texting exists".
Brislen said Kiwis were also world leaders when it came to downloading tunes to their handsets, perhaps kickstarted by iTunes' late arrival.
The phone company beat all music chains, including the Warehouse, to be the number one seller of singles until earlier this year, when it released "Music Store", meaning customers no longer purchased music one at a time, but paid $2.50 a week to listen to as much as they wanted.
Sociologist Roslyn Kerr, who lectures at the University of Canterbury, said texting was particularly popular, and prominent because of its "low social weight. We like it when things don't interrupt our everyday conversations."
