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E-Mail Dying Among Teens For Lack Of Convenience

Posted on: Tuesday, 22 July 2008, 09:00 CDT

Peter Deng isn't big on e-mail.

The problem, he explains, is that the format is too, well, formal.

"I use e-mail really sparingly," says the 17-year-old who will be a senior this fall at McClatchy High School in Sacramento.

E-mail, he explains, is reserved for communicating with teachers or - oh, the irony - getting MySpace and Facebook notifications.

Deng's pal Terren Wing sees it this way: E-mail offers less at- your-fingertips convenience.

"I'm just attached to my cell phone," explains the 16-year-old McClatchy High student. "I really only use e-mail for (sending) attachments or keeping up with (school) assignments."

Deng and Wing aren't, obviously, the only teens shunning e-mail in favor of other platforms such as texting, instant messaging and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Microblogging sites such as Twitter and programs such as Skype, which allow users to make phone calls using the Internet, are also popular.

A pair of 2007 studies conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project showed that teens are steadily drifting away from the old-fashioned medium.

While 92 percent of surveyed adults said they regularly used e- mail, only 16 percent of teens made it a part of daily life while text messaging (36 percent), instant messaging (29 percent) and social network site messaging (23 percent) gained in popularity.

As teens and 20-somethings and, increasingly, other generations, bypass their in-box in favor of other formats, is e-mail endangered?

"I don't see it as being phased out - it's still important," Deng says. "(But) texting is simpler, you can just say 'what's up?' An e- mail should be of a more decent length."

Wing also uses LiveJournal to bypass formalities through blog posts and a comments section.

"We used to just yell at each other - 'Why haven't you returned my call?' - now my friends have blogs (and) we use them to catch up."

Don't worry, the behavioral shift isn't entirely generational. As e-mail in-boxes overflow with spam, cute-kitten photos, viral video links and all those newsletters you forgot signing up for, we're seeking faster ways to digitally interact.

Take Jim Schraith. The 50-year-old investor still uses e-mail, sure, but regularly augments it with other platforms.

"I use Skype for business communication (because) it's fairly immediate," he says.

The same can't be said for e-mail, says Schraith, who regularly text messages with his two college-age kids.

"I'm still getting as much - or more - as I did two years ago, but a lot of the quick-communication e-mails have gone away, replaced by Skype or instant messaging," he says.

For Mark Eagleton, e-mail is the form of last resort.

"I rely pretty heavily on (instant messaging)," says the 35-year- old computer programmer.

"My in-box is filled - I get something like 200 to 500 messages a day; there's just too much to go through," he says. "E-mail is usually only for sending stuff to family (members) or a lot of people at once."

Eagleton is also a big fan of Twitter, a micro-blogging service that lets users post 140-character posts and "follow" friend updates.

"It's great for checking the status of what they're doing," he says. "You can also use it to ask a bunch of people a question at once - it's like a quick instant message service."

Layton Wedgeworth hopes people will start using his new BeenUp2 platform in the same fashion.

The developer describes the service as "Twitter with photos." The idea is simple: Users upload cell phone photos to keep up with friends on the microblogging site.

Wedgeworth says the application, launched last year, is simpler than YouTube and more fun than e-mail - the use of which, he believes, is definitely on the wane.

"I've noticed that, in my circle of friends, we use e-mail mostly for notifications rather than actual conversations," says Wedgeworth, 27. "The real-time aspect of other platforms is more attractive e-mail just gets lost in the junk drawer."

Don't write the e-mail obituary, yet.

"The death of e-mail has been greatly exaggerated," says Steve Jones, a senior research fellow with the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

"There are more options for communicating, but e-mail still has many advantages over other modes of communication," says Jones, on the phone from Chicago.

For example, e-mail is easy to ignore. And, yes, that can be a good thing.

"You can deal with e-mail at your leisure - it doesn't have the same demand and insistence that other (platforms), such as instant messaging, do," Jones says.

"With IM there's the expectation that you'll always be there, that you'll answer right away - the more people you communicate with, the more you're always on. And that can get pretty exhausting."

And, he adds, although many view e-mail as something quaintly formal, it's an office mainstay.

"It's easily saved, stored and searched (and) it provides a record of our conversations in ways that some other mediums can't," Jones says. "It's considered as good as paper in a business sense."

The kids, Jones says, will eventually figure that out.

"The younger demographic will change the workplace by bringing more tools into it," he says. "But by some extent they will also be changed by the workplace."

Source: Bismarck Tribune

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