America's Fastest Texter is a 16-Year-Old - as part of the news series by GeoBeats.

How fast can you text? I bet not as fast as the guy who just won the LG U.S. National Texting Competition that took place in Times Square, New York.

Austin Wierschke from Queens, New York was declared the winner for 2012 and this is his second win in a row. The 16 year old competed with ten others who ranged in age from 16-24. His winning prize - a cool $50,000. Some of the texting challenges the contestants faced, as noted by CBS News, - texting while blind-folded, texting with hands behind their backs and Text Blitz, where contestants had to copy phrases as fast as possible.

The excitement was building for the competition in the past several days. LG even posted on their facebook page the day before - Our finalists are in the locker room- they're doing thumb push-ups, getting ready.

Texting has really taken off in the last few years - it is estimated that 200 thousand text messages are sent every second. Among all groups of teens, text messaging is preferred over any other interaction between friends, including face to face interaction and talking on the phone.