In homage to the technology that changed communication as we know it, we created a 30-year timeline of texting from the first-ever text to modern-day SMS.
Where have we come since the first text was sent on December 3rd, 1992?
Let’s travel back in time.
In the last three decades, texting has experienced its fair share of growth — from T9 texting, short codes, and Blackberry keyboards to emoji introductions, voice text features, and COVID-19 alerts.
Now, billions of text messages are sent worldwide each day. Texting is such an essential part of modern communication, it’s difficult to think about what life would be like without it.
Texting recently turned 30 years old. In homage to the technology that changed communication as we know it, we created a 30-year timeline of the history of texting from its inception, to widespread adoption, to modern-day SMS.
Read on for the full history of text messages from 1992 to today.
Today, texting is much like drinking your morning coffee or taking an afternoon walk — it’s a daily ritual. On average, 23 billion texts are sent worldwide each day (270K texts every second) and Americans check their text messages 15 times per day or more.
Texting has grown at an accelerated pace, and SMS marketing has followed suit. In 2022, over half of U.S. businesses integrated texting into their marketing mix and in 2024, 79% of American consumers subscribed to SMS marketing.
What’s more, it’s predicated that 3.5 trillion business texts will be sent in 2023. From AI-powered, SMS chatbots to 10-digit long codes (10DLC), we can’t wait to see what’s next for texting.
Visit our success stories to see how text messaging for businesses within e-commerce, retail, education, healthcare, real estate, and technology have leveraged SimpleTexting’s text messaging service to grow their sales pipelines and beef up their digital marketing strategies.
Interested in learning more about SMS? We can get you started with text marketing in just 10 minutes. And better yet? You can try it out for free.
Dani Henion is the content team lead at SimpleTexting and is continuously looking for ways to make text messaging strategies and tips more accessible to SMBs. When she's not writing or planning new SMS content, you'll find her decorating elaborate sugar cookies or thrifting in Atlanta.
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