American teens send more than 3,000 text messages a month - or more than 10 times every hour that they are not sleeping or in school, according to a new study.

Meanwhile, children 12 years old and younger send about 1,146 text messages a month - or about four text messages per waking hour that they are not in school.

Research firm Nielsen reached these conclusions after analyzing more than 40,000 cell phone bills every month to determine what consumers actually spent their money on.

Fortunately for American children and teens (and their parents), many of them are on unlimited texting plans, rather than paying the standard 20 cents per message rate charged by some cell phone providers.

And despite the negative publicity surrounding texting plans in the U.S., they are actually a deal compared to places such as Europe, Neilson concluded.

"While U.S. carriers offer unlimited texting for between $10 and $20 per month ... not every country in Europe is as competitive as the United States," writes Rogner Entner, senior vice president of research and insights for the Telecom Practice at Neilsen, on the firm's blog.

For example, Germany, the largest European market, wireless providers charge about 25 Euros (about $34 U.S.) for between 300 text messages and 30 MMS and up to 3000 text messages per month.

MMS stands for Multimedia Messaging Service and is a way for users to send images and video between phones.

Neilsen predicts SMS-usage will increase in the U.S. as the text-messaging population ages and they encourage the older generation to text with them as a means of staying in contact.

"The average text message number has increased every year, but the huge room for growth that is still remaining has been underestimated given the penchant for texting among the 17-and-under segment," Entner writes.