I can never reach our teenage daughter on her cell phone, even though each month we go a few million dollars more into debt trying to cover her overages. But when I text her, whether she’s at the mall or in class (or, for all I know, behind the gym) I get an immediate response. So, being the savvy tech geek I am and never letting a new trend last more than a few years before I jump on the bandwagon, I now text her more than I call her.

My brother-in-law tells me that he communicates more with his three grown sons now than he did when they lived at home. You guessed it: texting.

This week , we learn that calls-per-person on mobile phones are down for the first time since parents had to begin arguing with six-year-olds over whether they were old enough to have a phone.

But there’s an interesting aside to the new JD Power survey. The typical morning commuter or the loudmouth in the park or the real jerk at the movies is no longer making such a loud nuisance of himself, the survey takers say. Said JD Power’s Caspar Tearle: “People apparently no longer feel the need to wave them around and make calls in a ‘look at me’ kind of way. They have taken on board the message that making calls can be seen as a nuisance and quite rude.”

Instead, the geeks (and increasingly just about everyone) and have their heads down, thumbs furiously at work, too busy texting to answer the dang phone. �