Email Use Plummets Among Teens

Email is for old people--literally.

Email use dropped 59 percent among users aged 12-17, as well as 8 percent overall, according to ComScore's 2010 Digital Year in Review. Users between 18-54 are also using email less, though among those 55 and older, email actually saw an upswing.

Young people are turning to social networks to communicate instead--the activity accounts for 14 percent of time spent online in the U.S.. That growth is fueled largely by Facebook, which has only continued to expand its reach in the past year--it accounts for 10 percent of page views in the U.S. and saw 38 percent growth in American users to 153.9 million. Total time spent on the site went up 79 percent to 49.4 billion minutes.

Facebook is only one part of the social networking picture. Nine out of every ten online users visited social networking sites by the end of 2010. LinkedIn grew by 30 percent to 26.6 million users, as Twitter grew 18 percent to 23.6 million users, and Tumblr saw 168 percent growth to 6.7 million users. Struggling MySpace saw a decrease of 26 percent, dropping to 50 million users.

If Facebook's revamped messaging system catches on, Gmail might actually have something to worry about.

Comments

[uniquindividual]

08:46 AM on 02/10/2011

Adults are less inclined to want or need to air their laundry in public the way teens are prone to.

I'm not the type of guy who wants a public diary.

[Charles Elk]

11:51 AM on 02/10/2011

Absolutley. Anyone who willingly posts information on facebook or any similar social media deserves all the bad things that happens to them as a result.

[uniquindividual]

10:39 AM on 02/12/2011

I don't know about "Deserves", but they certainly should not be surprised.

[MSMSucksCom]

02:50 AM on 02/10/2011

Sorry... but this article seems irrelevant to me. I mean, teens text instead of e-mailing? That's newsworthy. I don't think so. Strike that, I know so.

I have always assumed the grammar and high schoolers text instead of e-mail. Wasn't the T-Mobile Sidekick primarily a texting device and I remember that the only people who owned Sidekicks were teens.

In any event, there was a statistic about e-mail that I read last year. It was that 80% of business communication is now done by e-mail instead of by paper letters.

Seems to me that this proves texting is for teens and adults newly in love. E-mail is for adults and people who have business to attend to.

I mean come on, the federal courts are all now on the ECF program ("electronic case files"). That means litigation is primarily done via the Net and... you guessed it, by e-mail. Lawyers now communicate with each other via e-mail and even federal judges prefer communications by e-mail.

I am not aware of any judge who uses a Sidekick nor requires the litigants to communicate by texting.

Lastly, the Microsoft trust busting trial ten years or so ago had Bill Gates on the stand explaining his e-mails.

That's all I have to say about all this.

[Spock]

10:52 PM on 02/09/2011

I only text if I have to.

[Danek Greori]

08:19 PM on 02/09/2011

What people seem to be forgetting is that e-mail was never that popular among teens in the first place. I'm 22, and I've pretty much grown up with an Internet connection; and the ONLY time I've ever used e-mail for anything (outside of a professional context) was for site registration and such. Professionally though it's an almost requirement.

So the fact that 12 years old and people in HS aren't using e-mail as much as they did previously (which was never very much at all) is far from spelling DOOM for E-mail itself as a medium.

[CanisLatrans]

04:46 PM on 02/09/2011

Sending an email generally infers writting a "letter", somethng with a bit of length and focus. But a person doesn't always have a letter's worth of info to pass on, and these day the fleeting thought and passing comment is the norm. Texting and Tweeting is more like a regular conversation; email now seems almost stiff & formal by those standards.

While I'm not a big fan of texting or tweeting, they don't bother me; it's just the way communication is seen these days.

[Tmboy]

03:41 PM on 02/09/2011

My voicemail says to email me.

[MalteseTiger]

02:55 PM on 02/09/2011

Email came into increased popularity cause it was almost instantaneous. (day or 2 compared to week or 2)

Email is dying compared to texting and social networking cause its no longer fast enough. (day or 2 compared to 1 minute to a few hours)

Texting and web chatting will slowly die as video chatting on phones gets more mainstream. (You got the person right there on screen, real time compared to hours or minutes waiting for a text/network response)

Tech evolution

[TStringfellow]

03:29 PM on 02/09/2011

How is email any slower than a text? Most of us get our emails on our phones, same as text.

[leslie bates]

02:12 PM on 02/09/2011

Every generation has its own "thing". For the current teens texting is the IT thing. In a few short years they will be seen as quaint as anyone who still uses a typewriter. Furthermore, I mourn for those kids memories when they grown older: they will boil down to a single view of a screen with mostly inane texts.

Adults who want to appear hip and cool to the teenagers and engage/promote this insanity ought to look in the mirror some more: that's exactly what the kids see - a pathetically desperate OLD 30-something. Kids love and respect adults who act like grown-ups, regardless of the adults' age.

To those with delusions to the contrary, remember your own thoughts when you were 14 and interfacing with a "decrepit" 20 y/o. Or your thoughts when you encountered a 40-y/o acting like a teen...

[CanisLatrans]

04:52 PM on 02/09/2011

Heh, it depends-- when I see a 40-something out hiking, biking, and refusing to shrivel up just because of his/her age, I think that's great.
When I see a 40-something out trying to "hook up" with a 19-year-old, then I think, "creepy".

But then, I'm a 40-something myself, so my outlook is not without it's bias.

For the record, I hike & bike, and (were I not married) wouldn't even worry about anything under 35.

But yeah, I remember having my first desktop computer --a 385, woot-- and thinking that typing a letter and printing it for mailing was just so cool, and what were the fogeys thinking, preaching about the "intimacy" of a hand-written letter! But then, my parents clung to rotary-dial phones until you literally could not buy them anymore except in junk shops.

[MSMSucksCom]

03:11 AM on 02/10/2011

Exactly right. Seems if someone wanted to recall (I don't have the time) one could come up with a book on each generation of teens things that were cool at the time, including how to communicate and the words (lingo) used.

As teens become adults other teens take over with some new fad and way to talk.

In supplement to my other post, I can't recall an adult ever communicating in my profession via text messages. If I ever saw that or if a colleague suggested it I would label him or her unprofessional. I'd also tell everyone about that person suggesting we text business communications rather than use e-mail. (I would not say a word and I would text instantly as if by magic if it was a client who liked to text rather than e-mail, at least the clients who are paying $800 an hour for our services.)

[AllyCat7]

12:50 PM on 02/09/2011

The more people use Facebook in place of e-mail, the more locked in all of its users will be, and the greater the staying power of Facebook. Their idea to angle their website to be a "white pages" of the internet was brilliant.

Btw, to the author, people above the age of 17 are not "old". What are you, 15?

[Schoolgirl666]

11:03 AM on 02/09/2011

Kids with the attention span of a gnat are texting.

[AllyCat7]

01:04 PM on 02/09/2011

True. I have some teenage cousins who, just two years ago, thought I was the coolest thing since sliced bread. But when I saw them again recently, they were glued to their cell phones and hardly gave me the time of day. Not only was it disrespectful, but I felt bad with them that their social skills were so poor. I instantly put them in check. Told them that I came there to see them and so they had to entertain me (half joking, of course). They got the hint and put their phones away. We have to be blatant like that with them. Otherwise, they'll never get the hint and it will be to their own detriment. Anyway, getting off soap box now :)

[Tmboy]

03:36 PM on 02/09/2011

Have teenagers not been ignoring adult for decades? They always been ignoring adults for friends, just now the way of interacting with the friends they are ignoring you for is phones and fb.

[AllyCat7]

01:04 PM on 02/09/2011

Correction: "felt bad FOR them"

[Icke Icke]

10:53 AM on 02/09/2011

Anyone still on MySpace is a WEIRDO.

[AllyCat7]

12:51 PM on 02/09/2011

lol I still own an account, but I don't use it :-P

[leslie bates]

02:13 PM on 02/09/2011

... or capable of making his/her own choices.

[Icke Icke]

10:37 PM on 02/10/2011

Yea just like the person who plays with their own poop is simply demonstrating the ability to make their own choices.

[twoto2]

06:07 AM on 02/09/2011

My thumbs are too big for texting.

[Trittydi]

04:22 AM on 02/09/2011

I can see this happening with my own kids. We use texting and facebook a lot. I still use e-mail with one daughter and my son - but the other daughter probably hasn't sent me an e-mail response in months.
*

[Zihuat]

03:06 AM on 02/09/2011

The trend is like a tightening noose. As attention spans decline so does our ability to think and reason -- to form or express complete and coherent thoughts. The U.S. is already dead last in Reading, and near-last in Math and Science on the OECD's education scale.
http://www­.geographi­c.org/coun­try_ranks/­educationa­l_score_pe­rformance_­country_ra­nks_2009_o­ecd.html
Mom, Dad... something to think about before you buy your kid that digital pacifier.

[Heretical-Eggs]

04:40 AM on 02/09/2011

It started years ago. There is another ending which might be more bright than most models forecast. I hope for that.

[JackHoffman]

02:38 AM on 02/09/2011

So that's why I never get an answer to my telegrams.

[AllyCat7]

12:51 PM on 02/09/2011

lolll

[Shaun Hensley]

02:11 PM on 02/09/2011

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