Adaptive Path Blog

One of my bugaboos in discussions of mediated communication is the common refrain that email better watch out, ‘cuz the young’uns are using IM and SMS!

Josh brought this up a few weeks ago, and around the time the Associated Press informed us of this fascinating trend. (A Google search turns up dozens more.)

I think back to when I was a teenager. Did I write letters? No, I spoke on the phone. All the time. (Much to my parents chagrin.) Teenagers love the kind of communicative babble that simply connects, whether or not there is anything to actually say.

The gist of many of these articles is that, as these teenagers get older, they’ll be less likely to adopt email. Bullpuckies. (I’ve made a pledge to not swear on this blog.) When these teenagers get older, and need to communicate ideas of substance and value, damn straight they’ll use email.

What they’ll likely do is use the communication channel best suited to the job. I don’t know about you, but *I* don’t use email exclusively. My colleagues can attest to my many IM windows and my love of SMS. But I use email a hell of a lot, when I have something substantive, that must stick.

Anyway, this rant got longer than it deserves to be. In short, pay no attention to “trends” reports that focus on teenagers and extrapolate The Future. We all change as we grow older, often resembling the generation before us (who hasn’t said, “Oh god, I sounded just like my (mom/dad)!”).

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 6th, 2006 at 10:08 pm and is filed under Interaction Design, Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.