How Email is Getting”Old” -Fresh Data Trends from Label Networks' Upcoming Spring Report Indicate Changes in Communication Patterns of American Youth Culture

In our upcoming Spring Youth Culture Study 2008″ we have an entire section dedicated to communication patterns, new media, and the digital lifestyle of youth culture. In this story, we take a look at the results to the question “In the past 6 months, how have things changes for you in terms of emailing?”

43.7% of 13-25-year-olds from North America are Emailing More Frequently overall in the last 6 months, indicating that it’s still an important form of communication, with 37.7% saying Just as Frequently, and 15% saying Less Frequently. However what’s interesting to note are differences when looking at the results to this question by the cross-tabulations by age groups. In the last 6 months younger demographics have higher percentages that are emailing Less Frequently compared to older demographics. What this indicates is that while emailing is still of course a popular form of communication, it’s no longer as popular when it comes to this new generation in terms of communication, mainly 13-14-year-olds and 15-17-year-olds as it is to say, 21-25-year-olds. Blogs and Social Networks, IM/Chat are taking up the percentages (see also our story on Social Networking patterns from last week).

One reason for this is that to many young people, emailing is consider something that people do at or for “work-related” projects rather than general communication with friends -whereby texting is far easier, “faster” and more intimate and mobile. What’s also interesting is that for young people today, who have grown up with email as a part of their lives from the beginning, the concept of emailing is considered “old” just as people in their 30’s consider “writing a letter” as old-school.

By gender, the early adopters of non-emailing factions are among females whereby 16.4% of females compared with 10.1% of males are emailing Less Frequently now than they did 6 months ago.

The Spring Youth Culture Study 2008 is available to Premium Global Youth Culture Subscribers only.