Gen Y Holds Tight to E-Mail and Texting

Newspapers may be reporting on the demise of e-mail, and some research indicates that young people are turning more toward social networking than more traditional online communication, but college students still see e-mail as a critical medium for messages.

More than one-quarter of college students told the Participatory Marketing Network and Pace University's Lubin School of Business' IDM Lab that e-mail was the activity they were least likely to give up for a week—far ahead of the 9% who said they couldn't live without social networks.

"These results may be surprising to some, but not if you consider the role email continues to play in the day-to-day lives of Gen Y," said Michael Della Penna, PMN co-founder and executive chairman, in a statement. "As long as email remains the collection point for social networking updates, including alerts around new followers, discussion updates and friend requests, it will remain a powerful force in marketing and our lives."

On average, respondents spend 33 hours per month on social networking sites, compared with 31 hours with e-mail, a small difference considering the hype around social networking.

Text messaging was tied with e-mail as the most "need to have" activity for college kids, nearly one-half of whom sent and received more than 500 messages a month.

First-half 2009 research from ExactTarget showed that social networks were not decreasing the time US Internet users spent with e-mail. In fact, the users most likely to be using e-mail less were also the ones who were using social networks less.

"Social media is one of several factors that help explain why email usage continues to rise although heavy users skew this effect," according to ExactTarget.