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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."
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.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
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.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
Here come the Korea jokes.
...AFTER they get a job. If I get less than 50 e-mails a day at work, it's a Christmas day miracle.
-Valiss
Did you hear that 18 year olds? You're old people now. Grab a prune-juice and check your email.
Starsucks
E-mail Is For Old People
So those VIAGRA spammers knew about this long before this research.
Thanks, here's another bomb: talking enthusiastically preferred to writing letters for conversation among peers located within 10 feet of each other.
stuff |
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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*.
Raise your hand if you remember when the command for Instant Messaging was 'write'.
In the office we use both IM and e-mail.
IM is used when we have a quick question, need to check and see if someone is in before we transfer a call, want to know who wants to get some Chineese for lunch, etc.
We e-mail our clients. We e-mail project status reports, team task lists, meeting agendas.
IM replaces what we would say on a phone. e-mail replaces what we would print on a printer.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
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.
The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success. -Elliot Carver
(interesting side note is that emailer is old enough to be in the dictionary, but IMer is not. One is truly old when one's verbifications are standard.)
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Apples are better than oranges.
Story at 11.
"it generally just feels childish and unprofessional"
I think you nailed why young people like it.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
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.
Don't get me wrong, I was a shortsighted twit when I was a teenager, too. What an ass! But all this does is document that teenagers:
1) Think the whole world revolves around them,
2) that is does, or should do so right now,
3) that anyone who isn't talking to them right now is a loser,
4) and that MTV has further reduced their attention span to that of a gnat.
In other news: teenagers think belts, savings accounts, and employers are also for Old People.
"Timmy, write your grandmother a thank you note for paying your tuition this semester."
"I can't - she's not online. What an old loser!"
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I just imagined /. in real time (an open chat room):
/. it's always like: argh, we are the pirates, MS is the biatch! Leenux all the way!
-FriSt Pst, b147ch35!
(with heavy Russian accent): -Hot grits. Get your hot grits here.
-Oh, yes, Nataly Portman always reminds me of a good big bowl of nice steaming hot gritz.
-GOOGLE ROKZ. THIER ARE THE CLOOOEST! I AM A ROKCET SCENTEIST >LWE>F PFQ!FP !
-In soviet Russia, Rocket Scientists Google YOU.
-Oh, man, I remember this one time, in the band camp....
-Yes, Microsoft is the evil empire. They are releasing this new service, a total Google rip off too...
-Microsoft is just trying to play nice, and here on
-It's Mr. GNU/Linux to you, a55h47.
-Give man a fish and he ows you a fish. Hit him on the head with a fish and he just swims there in the fishery. For the dead fish.
-4ll y0ur b453 4r3...
-You, dumb ass, this 'all your base' crap is like 10 years old. Get with the program!
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Yup. I can see why teenagers like the IM more than email. You have to think before sending an email (well, at least a little more) because you don't have the easy way to instantly correct what you just said.
You can't handle the truth.
"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?
IM is a huge pain in the butt.
/. just have an article about three minute distraction intervals and the loss of creativity?
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
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.
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.
Breakfast served all day!
Back in my day, we didn't have these fancy IM thingees. We had smoke signals. In some bad winters, we ran out of dry wood to burn, so we burned dirt! There's nothing like sending a "I pwned you!" dirt smoke signal to somebody who's fire I just rooted.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I keep in touch with everyone I know through Anonymous Coward postings on Slashdot.
Mouch of teens' communication is related to forming and strengthening social networks and finding their places in them. This requires a lot of rapid, short-term interaction. IM is a good match for this.
Adults (in general) have social networks that are well-established and don't require constant work. Their communication needs are more oriented to planning and coordination of longer-term projects, whether business, day-to-day "housekeeping", politics, skill-building, or any of a host of other things that are longer term and more asynchronous. Email is a good match for that.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.