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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Summary

[Fear the Clam]

IM is synchronous; e-mail is asynchronous. See the literature [december.com] for corresponding behavior.

They will change

[Anonymous Coward]

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

That will change when they get old enough to pay their own way in life. When they are working a job to pay their way through school plus raising a kid, no one wants someone constantly interrupting them to ask 'wot u up 2?'

IM = Instant Gratification

[reporter]

The young adults of today are part of "Generation Y", which was discussed in a report titled "The Echo Boomers [cbsnews.com]" 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.

IM vs Email

[Drako2]

I worked on a development team where half of our programmers were in Russia and the other half were in-house and our only form of conversation was IM.

I think what people 12-17 don't understand, and not through any fault of their own but mostly just because of the fact they haven't been exposed to corporate America is that there's a thing called Accountability. People in the business world now feel that e-mail is a sufficient medium for discussing important business matters, setting deadlines, etc. While this may change in the coming years, and definetly will, that is the concensus now. So, for someone 12-17 who doesn't have to deal with corporate America at this point e-mail probably does feel a bit old school.

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.

Call me the dinosaur

[modi123]

This is probably going to equate me with the Stone Age, but I find both email and IM rather impersonal. I would rather get up, and walk the 10 feet to talk to the person directly. I find breaking the isolation gets better results. *shrug* Why cut out 70% of my communication abilities (read: body language). If something goes south on a project I can reinforce behavior with my 6'7 frame. *grin*

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".

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:Different technologies, different purpose

[slaker]

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.

IM is for none of the above. At least, it isn't until there is a single standard IM protocol. As things presently stand there are, what? Four protocols? Five?
I wouldn't consider a telephone network that required me to have four or five different phones, and I won't consider IM usable until there is only one IM standard.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd more or less say that a lot of people haven't needed to write many letters/email. Formal written conversation isn't as common for youths. Perhaps if the internet/email/phone didn't exist then writting letters would be commonplace. But, for the most part, there isn't much of a point to write formally. It has nothing to do with instant gratification, IM'ing is mearly an extension of face-to-face verbal comunication, except in a textual form.

Re:News bulletin o' the day

[SeeTheLight]

I've seen two adults do the same thing, but using telephones to talk to each other, when they have offices that are next door to each other.

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.

Re:Sure, because teenagers are shortsighted twits

[Rayaru]

That's total BS. It's got absolutely nothing to do with "bad apple" teenagers. I think IM is actually more personal than email, and in many cases, instantaneous response is necessary! (e.g. "Hey Chris, want to go to the movies?" as opposed to "Dear Chris, Would you care to accompany me to the movies this evening? Sincerely, -Bob") I'm tired of seeing broad generalizations used to describe teenagers. Most of the people in federal prison are adults, right? So I guess, by this logic, I could make the statement, "Oh, all adults are sociopathic perverts!" That line of reasoning is totally bogus, as is the argument it produces.

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.

Re:Different technologies, different purpose

[Jambon]

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

Yes, but can you imagine how many phone lines you'd need to talk to the amount of people you can talk to using IM?

Re:Sure, because teenagers are shortsighted twits

[Bullet-Dodger]

To say that you prefer it over e-mail means that you prefer to communicate with people who are also sitting around waiting for the beep of their IM client.

And preferring the phone over writing letters means that you prefer to communicate with people who are also sitting around waiting for the ring of their phone.

Not to be trollish, but I don't see the difference (unless you think phones are also for shortsighted twits).

He's 100% right

[Wee]

This garbage is moderated insightful? The moderators must have never worked in the real world.

I refuse to be interrupted by IM. If you need something, email me, or come over to my desk and talk to me. Both of those activities takes more effort than simple chat, and so weeds out the really frivolous things. (More often than not, by the time they email or talk to me, they've solved their own problem.)

Besides, I hardly ever mind talking to someone face to face, but that little blinking IM window icon makes me seethe. And when I'm seriously heads-down, people can actually see that and so tend to not bother me. (As I do for them when I walk over to their desk.)

BTW, this is accepted policy where I work and I'm far from alone in doing it. Most people here refuse to run an IM client and respond to desk encounters with "Can this be put into an email?" even before the question is asked.

An added benefit of this is that email can be printed, filed, saved, annotated, forwarded to a larger group, replied to later, etc. IM is limited as a lasting form of communication. IM is not as bad as voicemail (which is almost completely useless), but it's still a pretty ineffectual and disruptive form of communication.

After you get laid off for not helping out the team, don't come crying to me.

Being able to do your job in a timely fashion, sans interruption, will rarely result in a layoff. Useless wool-gathering IM sessions are another matter.

-B

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.

Why email is best

[DrVomact]

IM isn't a replacement for email, it's a replacement for the telephone. The crowd who used to have phones permanently grown into their ears now have fingers worn down from constant IM-ing. Though IM and email are alike in that both are text, IM shares a much more important characteristic with the telephone: both phones and IM are synchronous, while email is asynchronous.

To act on an IM or phone call, you have to be there, and you have to respond immediately. That means if you're not at your computer or near your phone, you miss the missive. (Yes, there's phone mail, but that's the most annoying form of communication there is--you have to sit through someone's incoherent explanation of what they want in real time, you can't skim it like a long email.)

I use email almost exclusively as a communication tool, and prefer it over all others most of the time. Why? Well, it's the asynchronicity. I don't have to be there the moment it arrives to respond; Email sits there and waits patiently for me if I'm gone when it arrives. Email doesn't interrupt me--i'm free to ignore it if I want--but I can still reply to it later. I can also take my time composing an email message and say just what I want to say.

Sure, my daughter uses IM all the time for talking to her friends--again, IM is clearly a substitute for the telephone, not for email. I don't think IM is intrinsically evil, but some IM programs are certainly a security hazard (she's also already downloaded one very destructive virus from an IM) so I've toyed with the idea of blocking IM from my home network. Unfortunately, Microsoft's IM monster is a port-prober and can't be shut out at the router. That's criminal...but then criminality is nothing new for the Satan of Seattle.

Re:Different technologies, different purpose

[mabinogi]

Not approving of people displaying open animosity for someone they don't know because of nothing but their political beliefs is not the same as loving the target of the animosity.

Learn to be a little more tolerant, and people will like you better.