Beginning Of The End Of E-Mail - Forbes.com
i just came across an interesting article that got me to thinking well into the future. here’s the link: Beginning Of The End Of E-Mail - Forbes.com
According to a study by the Pew Internet and American Life project, barely 5% of American teens aged 12 to 17 prefer e-mail over instant messaging as their digital communications method of choice. Teens view e-mail as a way to talk to “old people” or institutions like companies. Kids, it seems, prefer the immediacy and mobility of instant messaging and text messaging to e-mail, which they might some day refer to as snail mail, the same way most people over 30 refer to the U.S. Postal Service.
the article goes on to explain that email use is not waning but IM use is picking up and that children are our future. i guess i am troubled by this prospect (not that children are our future, mind you; rather, that they prefer IM over email and that it has implications for the future). for one, i personally hate being interupted and asked to participate in a conversation on someone else’s schedule. with email, i can set aside some time each hour or in various segments of any day to choose to participate in correspondence; IM doesn’t have that same luxury. sure, i could turn my IM off, but eventually i am going to have to get back with anyone wanting to talk with me and now i am becoming the person who is interrupting others. am i just being old-fashioned in this thinking?
further, i think anyone who has watched two high school kids chatting with an IM client knows that what they are witnessing is far from anything taught in school and certainly never encouraged . . . a whole new language (that’s being kind) that butchers the English language. l8r; brb; IMHO; peeps; ROTF; ;~); {rolls eyes}; etc. at least with email, most people make some semblance of an effort to communicate using something a bit more formal and proper. as educators, shouldn’t we encourage proper use of the English language?
what do you think? any chance we’ll see email use drop off in the future as people shift to IM? perhaps a new technology will replace them both??? my IM client (iChat) allows me to have audio and video chats with other iChat users. then again, most kids have access to the telephone or a cell phone and they still tend to prefer the IM, so who knows what the future holds?
September 13th, 2005 at 6:55 pm
Very interesting article! But…Okay so maybe I have to say we might not see ‘eye to eye’ on this. When e-mail became the hot new thing everyone used it, but then when instant messaging became popular i am sure a lot of kids thought ‘hey why not just talk to that person right away instead of waiting for a response.’ Of course I still use email for contacting my professors or when I need to send the same long message to more than just one person, but for ‘chit-chating’ i believe that instant messaging is the way to go. I think it’s convienant to have a number of people you can talk to all at the same time. I agree with the point of who knows what the future holds because I am sure that what we have now will become much more advanced!
September 14th, 2005 at 12:08 pm
I love the fact that this keeps being brought up. The more you talk about an issue, the more importance you know that it has. We were talking about this very same issue the other day in my Critical Interpretaion class. Conversation is a lost art and people have no idea how to focus on the indiviual that they are corresponding with anymore. The fact that you can have multiple conversations is nice, but doesn’t allow you to fully engage yourself. Going along the lines of the English language and it losing it’s meaning and importance is huge. People don’t even know the correct way to speak to each other. Of course there is slang that is used everywhere you go, but what happened to articulating and expounding on what it is that you are actually trying to get across to someone? Words are beaultiful. The fact that we keep “dumbing down america” is sad and limits the possibilites for the children of the next generation.
September 14th, 2005 at 5:15 pm
I’m 19 and quite backwards for a 19 year old as I just succumbed and got an AIM name last spring. I really don’t like it though. It’s nice occasionally talking to people, I wouldn’t normally talk to, but I don’t like being interrupted, and I agree with Stacey, that talking to several people at once doesn’t allow you to be fully engaged. I hope e-mail won’t become obsolete, and I tend to think it won’t because you just can’t get a set of coherant thoughts across by instant messaging.
September 16th, 2005 at 9:54 pm
I found this article to be very interesting! I understand how a lot of people prefer IM over email because it is a very fast way to communicate to each other. A lot of people don’t check their email everyday, so if you leave them an email they might not respond for several days. In this sense, I think that the IM is more convenient because people respond to that sooner than email. Yet, I prefer email over IM because you can take your time to write your message and you do not have to worry about holding up somebody’s day by taking a lot of time to write your message. Also, everybody isn’t always on IM all the time, so if you want to leave them a message they aren’t always available. Therefore I actually prefer email over IM. I think that email will someday be replaced by some other method but I don’t think it will be the IM.