E-mail Is For Old People

Strolls writes "Although the article itself doesn't seem quite as exciting or newsworthy, this headline from Reuters amused me mightily. Reuters' summary is here and here's the original survey by Pew Internet and American Life Project." From the article: "Internet users from 12 to 17 years old say e-mail is best for talking to parents or institutions, but they are more likely to fire up IM when talking with each other, the nonprofit Pew Internet and American Life Project found. E-mail is still used by 90 percent of online teens. But the survey found greater enthusiasm for instant messaging."

Comments

Different technologies, different purpose

[It doesn't come easy]

IM is for conversation, email is for documentation.

IM is for communication in real-time, email is for communication any time.

IM is for communication with someone online, email is for communication with someone online or offline.

IM is for temporary messaging, email is for permanent messaging.

IM is for instant messaging, email is for persistent messaging.

As a group, teens have more time to sit and chat than adults, hence the preference for IMing friends. IM is just the electronic equivalent of hanging out at the mall.

Re:Different technologies, different purpose

[sidb]

M is just the electronic equivalent of hanging out at the mall

IM is the electronic equivalent of telephones, which are a notorious teen passtime.

IM and Email complement one another

[bigwavejas]

Of course kids are going to love instant gratification through real-time instant messaging as opposed to email. Until they grow up and find themselves in business situations where they're going to need to coordinate meetings, share presentations/comments and work with peers/partners who live in different time zones there simply isn't a need for them to use email. Can you imagine logging in and finding your desktop covered with IM pop-ups from customers and colleagues? It's just not practical in the business arena to use IM as the only means of communication.

Re:IM and Email complement one another

[tcampb01]

Let's rephrase the survey... apprently Pew Research wasn't clever enough to notice that the difference isn't your age so much as it is your level of responsibilities.

People with jobs, spouses, kids, and other responsibilities don't have the idle time to keep up with constant interruptions for meaningless chit-chat. When we do chit-chat, IM is far far too slow and time consuming - we actually communicate using strangely effective organs evolved from prehistoric times called "vocal cords".

Ask the kids again...

[Valiss]

...AFTER they get a job. If I get less than 50 e-mails a day at work, it's a Christmas day miracle.

comparison doesn't hold

[circletimessquare]

im is synchronous

email is asynchronous

so they both have their pluses and minuses as a communicaiton medium, depending upon what you are doing

i think the kids are just restating the fatigue we are all feeling from the effects of email spam

because us "old people" have more to do ...

[SABME]

I suspect this is largely true, mostly because we "older" folks have more responsibilities that preclude us from hanging out and IMing each other.

I use IM at work to talk with other folks about the crisis du-jour. With a million things clamoring for my attention all day, it's nice to have an asynchronous medium like email for things that don't need a response *right this instant*.

Nice Numbers....

[Yad]

90% still use email, but have "greater enthusiasm" for IM? Somehow I don't get the conclusion that email is for old people from that.

IM = Instant Gratification

[reporter]

The young adults of today are part of "Generation Y", which was discussed in a report titled "The Echo Boomers" and broadcast by "60 Minutes" in 2004 December. The report states, " Levine calls the phenomenon visual motor ecstasy, where any cultural accoutrement that doesn't produce instant satisfaction is boring. As echo boomers grow up, they'll have to learn that life is not just a series of headlines and highlight reels ".

The main reason that instant messaging (IM) is popular among young adults is that it provides the kind of instant gratification that e-mail cannot provide. IM gives you instant interaction with the other party: friend, girl friend, etc. E-mail responses are usually not instantaneous and depend on whether the recipient of the e-mail note has logged onto her computer and actually read the note.

Re:IM = Instant Gratification

[pmj]

I have a younger sister, and it isn't surprising to see that her generation doesn't like email. I say this because:

a) instant gratification, as stated above. We live in an even more 15-second world then when I was a kid.

b) (and I think this is the more important one) they have nothing to say to each other. Aside from planning events on weekend evenings and such, the IM conversations I've seen between teens amount to little more than inane chatter. (I think we could even go so far as to lump 90% of all IM conversations in the inane chatter category, no matter the age of the chatters.)

It is hard to write an email about nothing.

Re:IM = Instant Gratification

[timster]

Children have never had anything to say to each other. Their conversation has always been inane chatter, mere practice for real conversation as adults. As such, children have generally never written letters to each other. E-mail is nothing different.

I swear, the greatest myth is that the new generation is different from the last one. People have been complaining that children are only interested in "instant gratification" for hundreds of years.

Re:IM = Instant Gratification

[Luyseyal]

Children have never had anything to say to each other. Their conversation has always been inane chatter, mere practice for real conversation as adults

Have you ever sat and listened to random people conversing? Both the old and the young talk about stupid shit all the time. So children do not have a monopoly on "inane" conversation. Furthermore, children do talk about important things, just rarely when adults are within earshot.

$0.02USD,
-l

Re:IM = Instant Gratification

[Golias]

It has been my experience that we adults don't have much to say to each other either.

If it weren't for blockbuster movies & sitcoms, spectator sports, meaningless hobbies, hopeless political arguements, old tasteless jokes, and maybe occasional bad weather, many people would just spend all day simply trying to avoid eye contact with each other.

Huh? What's the point?

[Octagon Most]

"E-mail is still used by 90 percent of online teens. But the survey found greater enthusiasm for instant messaging."

"Three-quarters of teen Internet users use instant messaging, compared with 42 percent of adults."

OK, 90% of teens use email and 75% of teens use IM. Yet teens have a "greater enthusiasm for instant messaging"? Sure, a greater enthusiasm than adults (75% to 42% according to this survey). Is that a surprise to anyone? But they are still more likely to be users of email. So what's the point of this?

Re:IM is a distraction EMAIL is ....

[Anonymous Coward]

IM is a huge pain in the butt.
IM is a distraction.
IM is a total waste of my time.

I used IM for a very brief period and got sick of everyone expecting an answer __right__ __now__. So I no longer use it. Ever.

Didn't /. just have an article about three minute distraction intervals and the loss of creativity?

Bingo!

You want an answer from me, send email.
When I get around to it, I'll read it. And then after that, when I get around to it, I'll answer it.

EMAIL works. IM interrupts work.

Pompous blabber

[PCM2]

The main reason instant messaging (IM) became popular with me is that my buddy Thad lives in Kansas City, while I live in San Francisco, yet we both happen to be sitting in front of computers all day. I later realized that it allows me to chat with my friend Dave, who works in an office in Redwood City, and we could both say the most horrible, offensive, profanity-laden things without alarming all the people in the cubes next to us.

That's it. No pop psychology or armchair media-studies theories required.

No, he's right, IM sucks for many...

[Otto]

He's dead right, although perhaps not in the way he intended.

IM is trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist for quite a lot of people. Instant communication over the network is basically trying to replace:
-Getting up to go talk to the guy (in office environments)
-Calling him on the phone (how many people have cell phones again?)

So for a lot of people, myself included, IM is worthless. If I need instant communication, the phone is faster, simpler, and less hassle all around. Maybe if you lacked always-on connectivity and had to use dialup or something, then I could see the benefit.

But people talk much quicker than they type, on average. So if I need an instant answer, I call the guy instead. Simpler than using a 1 on 1 IM client.

Note that this doesn't apply to chat rooms or IRC or other multi-to-multi text messaging systems. That has some real benefit, solving a problem that doesn't have other good solutions. It's person to person IM that I'm talking about here.