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The people in the UK are spending more time sending messages to friends and family than calling them, indicating that new communication methods are starting to overshadow traditional forms of contacts.

Ofcom, the phone regulator and watchdog, recently published its annual research on the ways British people interact with each other. When asked about the forms of communication they use on a daily basis, 68 percent said text-based methods and 63 percent went with voice-based services, revealing that texting is now a more common way of keeping in touch. The average Briton sends over 50 text messages per week, adding up to over 150 billion texts in 2011, which has more than doubled since 2007.

By comparison, the number of calls being made has dropped by 5 percent last year. And for the first time ever, both mobile phones and landlines contributed to the fall in the volume of calls.

The report also found that mobile Internet usage has surged, with UK adults spending an average of 90 minutes every week accessing social networking sites, emails or the Web. Young Britons aged between 16 and 24 are leading this shift in communication habits, as they now prefer online socialising to face to face meeting.

Unsurprisingly, the boost of mobile Internet is closely related to the rise of Internet-connected mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. According to Ofcom’s survey, about two fifths of UK adults now have a smartphone, with the same proportion seeing their handset as the most important device for Internet use. Up from 2 percent a year ago, an average of 11 percent of households own a tablet, and the percentage is expected to grow in the future. On a side note, e-book reader ownership accounted to 10 percent during the same period.

It is amazing how technologies keep changing the ways we interact with each other. As we move forward in the digital era, there is no surprise that newer forms of communication will continue to emerge while traditional and old-fashioned methods gradually fade away.