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That’s the question being asked by Salford University’s Professor Nigel Linge, who is on a mission to find out just what impact the text message is having on Valentine’s Day.

To try and discover just how much modern technology has impacted on more traditional romantic greetings, engineering expert Nigel is running an online Valentine's card survey.

The idea behind his investigation comes from the fact that in recent years, Valentine's Day has featured in the top five texting days for the UK - alongside New Year's Day, Christmas Day, and GCSE and A Level results days - though Nigel’s quick to point out that "the Royal Mail is still expecting to deliver 12m cards this year".

Nigel says it will be "interesting to see how the two compare and, more importantly, how people perceive sending or receiving a text compared to a traditional card. I'm also looking forward to seeing whether there is a clear split in the responses from males and females."

The results of that survey showed an overwhelming support for the traditional Christmas card and a significant thumbs down for the e-card alternative - with 68 percent saying they wouldn't prefer to receive an e-card, compared with eight percent who said they would.

"The e-cards at Christmas time were perceived to be thoughtless, impersonal and a 'cheapskate' alternative," says Nigel, "so it will be interesting to see if this is the case with texts on Valentine's Day."