Email Use Drops by 59% Amongst US Teens in One Year | Hacker News Reader

Email Use Drops by 59% Amongst US Teens in One Year

thedrum.co.uk

15 pointsgatsby24 comments

Email is a protocol. Phones are a protocol. Facebook is... a company. I don't like the idea that the coming nexus of communication is a single-company provider, with zero incentive to open up a "facebook message protocol"... they simply want to be the only source of communication.

I find this scary.

I wouldn't worry that much. Phones were a company once too.

Yes, but I can switch companies when I'm not happy with my current company or don't like their policies. Also, my AT&T phone can call my friend's Verizon phone.

That wasn't always the case. There was a time before I was born where you either had a phone through Ma Bell or you didn't have a phone.

Yes, but market forces did not solve that problem.

Should we not worry about Facebook because government will solve it?

What about their uptake of new technologies to return savings to customers? Both those providers don't want VOIP to become the norm.

Until the US government spent 10 years pursuing action (back when corporations didn't completely control the govt).

10 years is a eon in internet time.

You find it scary that they want that, or that this is how it is turning out? I don't think the former is scary -- that's obviously their best bet for paying their bills. There's nothing scary about Facebook not wanting to reduce their ad impressions by allowing me to talk to my friends on FB via Outlook.

If the latter is actually what worries you, then there's nothing we can really do about that, nor should FB be forced into changing the way things are working out for them. There is a lot of value in a central hub. Email sucks for what FB is great for and decentralized hubs for FB-like communication will likely always suck unless there is great cooperation between disparate hubs and a great way to ensure there is a level of trust between data sources. Not likely to be developed in the near future. It's a difficult problem, but there may be some hope with the Semantic Web initiative and with linked data. Either way, you will most likely be signed up with one of those hubs and that will be your hub.

I'm not suggesting they should be forced into anything, and I don't have a problem with the idea of a person using a central hub; I use google applications for tons of things, for documents, calendar, etc. What I don't like is that to communicate with anyone using the facebook hub, you have to also be using it. I can use nothing but gmail for my communications, but someone using hotmail can easily communicate with me.

An equally serious problem is that Facebook makes no assurances whatsoever about whether they will choose to filter/censor communication (as they did here http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/22/facebook-censorship/). If I/a business want to be absolutely sure that any mail sent to me will get to me and never be deleted or censored, I can buy a domain and run my own email hosting; it's not a the whim of some external company.

Before I got into the "professional" world I never used my email. I had one mostly to sign up for things and a few notifications from services.

When I started my first job, that was related to my career, my email use sky rocketed. Email is now my life blood. I have over 50 servers that drop me various forms of messages and notifications. I have discussions with my boss about the direction we should take things. My coworkers will use it to ask questions.

Email is useful. In fact I would say it is one of the most useful pieces of modern technology we have, but only for a subset of uses. Most people don't have the needs, at least in their private life, that email fulfills. Particularly teens.

I think that's kind of the point. We, as adults, use e-mail, especially at work. By the time these teens get to work, what will happen is a mix of 1) They adapt to using email 2) They'll use their way of communicating with their then-colleagues.

New technologies are adopted more slowly at work, but eventually they will be, because people will use what is efficient for them. (For a good recent example, look at the adoption of wikis in companies)

This article makes illogical conclusions.

Here is the primary source: http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/1/W...

The chart in the original post has in its title "Web-based e-mail". That chart represents the amount of time spent using web-based e-mail. Not the number of e-mails sent or received on web clients. Not e-mail app usage. And not mobile usage.

Mobile e-mail usage amongst teens has gone up 40%. Isn't that a more likely reason for the decline in web-based e-mail that an unquantified Facebook influence?

How accurate are these types of measurements? Even if teen email use in the US dropped dramatically last year, how do we know it was replaced by facebook use?

Exactly - how on earth do you compute 'teen email use'? If it is self-reported it is likely to be inaccurate. If it's based on some type of network analysis, the amount of spam would skew statistics, because spam is only sorted generally at the point of arrival.

Anyways, color me skeptical.

Even if it was Facebook messaging taking over from email, that's hardly a problem, because in the eyes of the user, facebook messages are email. You have an inbox, sent items, new message, etc. If/when the teens get to a job or study, they aren't going to be stumped by viewing a messaging client instead of a facebook page.

34%

I am an younger person who sends a magnitude more emails than text messages and facebook messages. Email is useful for classes, coordinating groups, and etc. where facebook and text messages are too limiting to use. Email is also a useful tool to communicate to all age groups.

The thing with email, is that, it's messy. No matter what you do, you eventually will start getting unwanted email and spam. It's boring to maintain a clean email address.

Unfortunatly there isn't any good alternatives to email. Google Wave tried it, yet, they failed.

I have two email addresses - one to sign up for things, registrations etc, and one for personal email.

Works pretty well.

I have that solution as well, but, my main email always ends up with spam content somehow. Maybe it's bad luck

There is an entire generation of youth who have grown up with Facebook and social networks at the center of their internet experience. While email will likely not be extinct any time soon, it may be used less as a social tool, and more as a business tool.

"emails may simply be too long or too stuffy for daily, non-professional communication"

Nah. The reason is no-one wants to log in to two things. People who start out most of their online life on a social network aren't going to want to log in to a second thing (email account) to communicate.

I started out on email, and don't want to log in to a second thing (Facebook) to communicate. I let Facebook notify my email when it gets a message though. I didn't want to get into Twitter, but Buzz fit into my Gmail habit (and can even link to Twitter).

I don't think this means the 'end of email'. This seems to me like a natural progression. Before FB, Twitter and cheap SMS, email was the most effective means of digital communication. Now we have different tools for different types of digital communication. That doesn't mean email is becoming obsolete. It's a bit like saying mobile-touch computers will replace all other types of computers. I don't see that happening at all. Instead, we just use a number of different computers (in all shapes and sizes), for different situations.

When I was a teenager, in the early 2000s, we hardly used email at all. We all used AIM to talk to one another. Pretty much the only reason to use email was to sign up for things online.

A drop in email use is no biggie. If it's just about communication, people will IM, facebook message, tweet, SMS, whatever. No biggie. But email isn't just about communication; it's also about identity. And as far as that aspect, email will never go away. At least, I believe, not in my lifetime.

To put it simply, as long as you need an email address to sign up for Facebook, email will not go away.

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