In Britain, the debate over kids and cell phones is all but over. Most kids have them.

More than half of 10-year-olds own mobile phones, but more than 90 percent of kids 12 and older in the UK have them. That's from The Mobile Life Youth Survey, which was commissioned by a cell phone retailer, The Carphone Warehouse, and advised by the London School of Economics, according to this AFP story.

Here in the states, 45 percent of kids between the ages of 12 and 17 have cell phones, a Pew Internet & American Life Project survey in July 2005 found. But those numbers are clearly on the rise, especially if the after-school scene at my kids' middle school is any indication. So the UK survey findings could be a tipoff of what's to come....

• 11- to 17-year-olds send nearly 10 messages a day, and make or receive less than four calls a day.

• Adults make or receive less than three calls a day and less than four text messages a day.

• Teens are asking each other out on dates through text messages rather than voice calls.

• 42 percent of girls say they would feel "unwanted" if they went a whole day without getting a call on their cell phones.

• One in three teens said they talk to or send text messages to people they don't want their parents to know about.