Thursday, July 22, 2010

Is email going away?

As many of you know, my current work-in-progress is about a teenage girl who falls prey to an internet predator.

I was revising a chapter yesterday that dealt with the use of email, and I decided to put some research time into the process.  And... I found an interesting statistic.

Only 11% of teenagers use email on a daily basis.

click here to see more about the end of email

According to the above website, fastcompany.com: "If you want to know what people like us will do tomorrow, you look at what teenagers are doing today," Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told the audience at Nielsen's Consumer 360 conference. And according to Sandberg, only 11% of teens email daily--clearly, a huge generational drop. Instead, they are increasingly turning to SMS and social networks for communication. "E-mail--I can't imagine life without it--is probably going away," she said.

So... I put some serious thought into it, and I don't know if email will ever go away (fax machines are still around), but she's right about the teenagers. My teenagers don't check their email every day. They check Facebook and their cell phones. Hmm.

What do you think? Do you think email is going to disappear? Replaced by cell phone and social networks?

2 comments:

  1. I hope not because there are times when I can't get into Facebook. And, there are those times when I can't get into Yahoo.

    Besides, Facebook and other network groups are so imposing. E-mail still gives us some privacy.

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  2. Agreed! Plus, we still have fax machines... so I'm sure email will stick around a long time. Thanks for commenting!

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