Fact · Typing and writing speed
26.3words per minute
Participants aged 50 to 59 averaged 26.3 words per minute on phones, the lowest of the age groups in Table 4.
Checked against its source on October 16, 2026
In the source's own words
“10-19 39.6 (14.3) p<.001 38.0 (14.8) p<.001 20-29 36.5 (12.6) 39.0 (13.3) 30-39 32.2 (10.8) 34.3 (13.8) 40-49 28.9 (9.2) 27.3 (9.0) 50-59 26.3 (9.9) 24.8 (9.1)”
How do People Type on Mobile Devices? Observations from a Study with 37,000 Volunteers, Kseniia Palin et al., Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2019), 2019, Table 4: Performance by demographic group.
Open the original- What it measures
- Table 4 gives the full sample first and the U.S. subsample second. The paper excludes 0.2 percent of participants older than 60 from the age analysis.
- What it does not show
- Standard deviation for this group is 9.9 WPM. The authors excluded participants older than 60 from the age analysis.