Thumbs up: can you text 38 words a minute?

According to a new study, two-thumb texters are almost as fast as keyboard users. We take to the streets to see if the public are up to speed

The human thumb, being opposable, is a blessed thing: we can hold a pen, send a text or play thumb war as the mood takes us. Today's digital natives will have learned to type before they crawl, and are capable of bashing out a "Hey, you up?" text faster than the brain can process that it is a bad decision. But not everyone is as lightning-fast: all of us know a one-finger typer, whether it is the co-worker who takes an eternity to reply to an email, or the beloved grandparent who pauses every few seconds.

For the most part, we have typed faster on computer keyboards than phone screens - until now. A study of more than 37,000 volunteers from 160 countries has found that people can type almost as quickly on a screen as they can on a keyboard. Those who used two thumbs were able to type on average 38 words a minute - making them just 25% slower than the average computer keyboard user. We took to the streets to put the study to the test and find out how fast the general public could type the same three-sentence, 38-word phrase (lifted, of course, from a Guardian article on the UK economy). Move over Mavis Beacon: the keyboard is dead. Long live the phone screen.