( CNN ) -- Mobile devices often get accused of alienating people from the world around them . But for U.S. teens , cell phones ( especially text messaging ) are a key way to stay connected with friends and other people in their lives , according to new research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project . Pew found that 63 % of all teens say they exchange text messages every day with people in their lives , including their parents . Also , nearly half of all teens send and receive text messages with friends daily . In contrast , 28 % teens say they never text their friends -- but then , 23 % of teens do n't have a cell phone at all . For teens , cell phones appear to correlate with social privilege . Nearly 90 % of older teens ( aged 14-17 ) have a cell phone , while just under 60 % of 12- to 13-year-olds have a cell phone . White teens are most likely to have a cell phone ( 81 % ) , vs. 72 % of black teens and 63 % of Hispanic teens . More than 90 % of teens from households earning $ 75,000 or more annually have a cell phone , compared with 62 % of teens from households earning less than $ 30,000 per year . Also , teens who live in the suburbs or whose parents graduated from college are most likely to have a cell phone . Only about one in four U.S. teens currently uses a smartphone , says Pew , in contrast to about 46 % of U.S. adults . Interestingly , Pew found that smartphone-using teens are slightly less likely than teens with simpler feature phones to have recently used a computer to access the Internet . However , teens with smartphones also are `` substantially more likely than other teens to have used a tablet computer to go online in the last 30 days . '' Teen girls ( 78 % ) slightly outnumber teen boys ( 78 % ) for cell phone ownership . And older teen girls tend to send and receive the most texts : a median of 100 per day . That said , teen boys now send 60 % more texts daily than they did in 2009 . Just over one-third of all parents of cell phone-using teens report using parental controls to help them manage their kids ' cell phone use . These controls can include limits on which websites they can access , which apps they can download and limits on the amount or hours of texting . If their teens have simpler feature phones ( rather than smartphones ) , parents are more likely to enable these controls . What are n't teens doing with their cell phones ? E-mail and instant messaging , which lag in popularity behind texting . `` Increasingly , teens do not have the capability or the interest in exchanging instant messages or exchanging e-mail , '' Pew notes . `` Nearly two in five teens say they never or can not exchange instant messaging , and another 39 % of teens say they never exchange e-mail . ''
Pew study : 63 % of teens say they exchange text messages every day . Comment: More than 90 % of teens from households earning $ 75,000 or more have a cell phone .