The Philippines became the texting capital of the world within five years from the introduction of SMS in 1995 because of the large number of text messages being sent in the country. At the time, around 4.5 million cellphone users were texting.

There were 22.51 million mobile service subscribers in the country that sent 195 million text messages per month in 2003; 33 million subscribers and 250 million SMS per day in 2005; 35 million users and 350 to 400 million SMS per day in 2006; 50 million users and 1.39 billion SMS per day in 2007, and 72 million users and 1.39 billion SMS daily or an average of 600 text messages per month per subscriber.

On Saturday, however, Department of Information and Communications Technology acting Secretary Eliseo Rio said the number of text messages sent dropped 40 percent in the last three years. He said Filipinos are switching to social media in sending message using online messaging apps because of the popularity of smartphones, wi-fi and data subscription.

In fact, the new habit has turned Filipinos into the world’s top Internet and social media users spending an average of 10 hours and 2 minutes online via any device, Rio said, citing the Digital 2019: Global Digital Overview report.

Interestingly, Filipinos became such despite the Internet speed in the country being the slowest in Asia Pacific at 10 megabits per second. Rio has a fearless forecast though. If Filipinos are the heaviest social media users in the world under a slow Internet, just imagine how much more they can be so if Internet speed becomes faster.