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Back in my day, teenagers talked on the phone, often ones connected to long, stretchy things called cords. Today, it’s all about texting.

A new poll from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that the average teen sent out 60 texts a day in 2011. That’s up from the 50 texts they were sending daily in 2009.

That’s already pretty distressing news if you’re a mother or father in charge of a family plan — but wait, there’s more! Teen girls between the ages of 14 and 17 sent out a whopping 100 texts a day. Older teen boys, however, made the biggest jump — in two years they went from sending 30 texts a day to 50.

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Verizon and AT&T should put those statistics on a poster as an incentive for parents to spring for unlimited messaging. Seriously, if you have any kind of messaging limit — say 1,000 messages a month — you’re going to be paying overage charges in less than a week if you have two teenage girls in the house.

And in other news sure to make you feel old, the poll found that only 14% of teens talk to friends on a landline. The fact that the device I was glued to as a 13-year-old is now as antiquated as the telegram definitely doesn’t help me feel any younger.

It also appears that teens aren’t texting in lieu of talking on their cellphones — they’re doing it on top of it. Teens in the heaviest texter category (more than 100 a day) were also far more likely to chat on the phone. For the sake of your monthly Verizon statement, just hope that you’ve raised an introvert.

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