Gen Y Says: You Can Take Facebook, but Please Don't Take our Email!
A recent study by industry group the Participatory Marketing Network has unearthed some surprising data on Gen Y behavior. Apparently, the members of this young demographic (ages 18-24) would rather give up their social networking accounts before they would abandon their email. Given that this generation is typically viewed as "plugged in" digital natives who don't have any use for email, the study raises many questions. Have the previous reports about Generation Y's disdain for email simply been wrong? Or has Gen Y grown up a bit now and has learned the necessity of the medium?
Gen Y Chooses to Keep Email, Text Messaging over Social Networks
PMN asked 203 panel members about their day-to-day behavior including the time they spent visiting social networks, reading and writing email, texting, talking on the phone, watching TV, reading magazines and surfing the web (visiting non-social networking sites).
When asked what activity they would be least willing to give up for an entire week, only 9% responded with "social networks." However, 26% responded "email." Another 26% said they wouldn't give up texting, although that finding is less surprising and fits in with other known behavioral traits of this particular demographic.
The report also notes that the time spent on social networks is now nearly the same as the time spent emailing. Panelists reported spending 33 hours per month on social networks and 31 hours per month on email. The difference of 2 hours per month is somewhat negligible. What's unexpected is how close those two numbers are to each other.
Questionable Findings?
According to Michael Della Penna, PMN co-founder and Executive Chairman, Gen Y finds email more critical because it remains the central hub for "social networking updates, including alerts around new followers, discussion updates and friend requests." While that may be true to a point, if the only reason Gen Y desired email access was for the social networking updates, it seems they would just go to the source instead: the social networks themselves. Given a choice between the two, it would be likely that they would have chosen to give up email and not their Facebook accounts. Something else must be going on here.
These findings also somewhat contradict a wider study done by Pew Internet and American Life earlier this year which more deeply examined how the different generations use the Internet. At that time, the study showed that email was still "for old people," so to speak, and email usage among teens had dropped from 89% in 2004 to 73% in 2009. Meanwhile, Pew also found that out of all the demographic groups surveyed, Gen Y was the most likely to use social networks.
Then last month, the Online Publishers Association revealed that web surfers' use of social networking sites like Facebook had become so rampant that it was actually causing a decline in email use.
While neither study specifically compares Gen Y's use of email against that of social networking sites, both seem to imply that email use is trending down thanks to the impact of social networking. That's why it's odd to find that one of the more "connected" generations would be quicker to abandon those social sites in favor of the more antiquated medium.
So Why Would Gen Y Give Up Facebook, but Not Email?
The answer to that question could be something as simple as how the survey question was worded. After all, the survey asked which activity they would give up for a week. Ask them again which one they could give up permanently and you may get a different answer.
Another theory is that all the hype about how Generation Y doesn't care for email is just an overblown stereotype about a demographic that, in reality, isn't all that different from the rest of us...at least when it comes to our inbox addiction.
Or perhaps Gen Y is starting to grow up a bit. Now that a large majority of them have exited their "teen" years and have entered the job market, they have begun to learn the importance of email communications. And no, they aren't just for receiving Facebook updates and friend requests. Email may now involve business-critical messages which jobs depend upon.
Finally, it could be that Gen Y has just a touch of Facebook ennui. The network, which used to be an exclusive hang out, has now been overrun by Baby Boomers and other "old folks" including bosses, parents, and sometimes even grandparents. Meanwhile, many have "aged out" of MySpace, finding themselves no longer as interested in the glittery profiles and loud music that seemed much more attractive in their high school days.
In addition, although we don't have any hard data yet, there are reports that Gen Y users are finding solace in alternative, niche social media sites like FML, Failblog, TextsFromLastNight, and Sporcle. Though not typical "social networks," these timewaster sites skew heavily towards young, college-aged adults says Carol Phillips, president of Brand Amplitude, a marketing firm that focuses heavily on the millennial demographic.
In any event, there's no need to take the PMN's study as gospel, especially given its relatively small sample set. Still, it raises the question whether this purported change in behavior deserves further study. Has Gen Y succumbed to email addiction like the rest of us? Or have they always felt this way? We hope some more in-depth research will reveal those answers in the future.
Image credit: Mac guy via Apple
Facebook
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
This isn't surprising at all. Reports on the death of email are just hype. The Internet might as well just go away without email.
You do realise that you can continue to get updates from ALL your social networks via email? This makes email the most powerful tool of all - it's not just Facebook or Myspace or whatever. Plus, it's less frequently blocked by work or school firewalls. Basically, email can be the hub for all the networks. You can still communicate via the social networks without directly accessing the social networking sites.
Couldn't it just be that respondents assumed that giving up Facebook didn't mean also giving up email updates that Facebook sends?
I remember being at a meeting at Bell Labs when the audience of researchers was asked whether they would give up internet or give up their phones. 99% wanted to give up their phones, which shocked the executive asking the question. He didn't realize what the audience knew- you could do phone over internet, but not (real) internet over phone.
I do agree with that. I think that 18-24 year olds slipped into the "email age" just before the age of social networking.
If you asked 12-18 year olds the same question, I guarantee you'd find a drastically different answer.
The only reason I can think of for 12-18 year olds having email is just to be able to create a social networking account! Not a single person that I know within that age range actively uses their email. Mostly they just leave it piling up with alerts from Facebook etc.
The only use of an email address I can think of for 12-18 year olds is instant messaging.
What generation do 12-18 year olds come under?
As an online editor for a social media community builder, I frequently hear our customers extol the usefulness of email communication. Many of their community members are in the younger Gen Y age range. What they say apparently matches survey results. That is, email is just too handy as a social networking tool...for activities like community content updates, alerts around new followers, discussion updates and best of all, friend requests.
Wrong question.
Email is a conduit for many applications, shopping, ebay, password reminders, etc. Without email, everything is crippled.
It is like asking, would you rather disconnect from the "power grid" or disconnect from the the "plugged in applicance"
believe it or not, some of us are individuals and not convenient groups for you to pigeon hole us in.
email was here before social networks therefore emails have been grandfathered into our minds.
@Michael Moore-Jones: I believe that would be Generation Z.
@Rajesh Acharya: Exactly.
I consider myself in generation Y, and I'd easily give up facebook over email. Email is a hub of communication with /everyone/ and /everything/ - teachers, co-workers, bosses, family members, friends - all the "old folks" and all the "young folks" use email. In particular, my university sends out all important updates and alerts through email.
Its like asking whether I'd give up biking or driving this week. Of course I enjoy biking, and spend as much time on it as I can, but I have to drive to work. There's no way around it.
Isn't this just because email is still required for certain things, like communicating with college professors (when you enter university you're ASSIGNED an email address) or receiving notices about services (bank accounts, doctors, etc)? Since so many people are going "paper-less" and since information flows instantaneously, virtually every business or service in some way has switched to e-mail over snailmail/phone for the same purposes. It's become much less "optional" than it was before for day-to-day functioning, at work, school OR home. Gen-Y knows this since they're tech-savvy and since they've adapted to a technologically-forward environment around them -- how much more likely is a Gen-Yer like myself to choose receiving an email over a phone call or a letter, statistically? And, for us, Facebook has been a social tool all along -- only more recently (past few years) has it been embraced for work contacts and events management and online organizing and all that. I could give up Facebook for a week, but maybe not forever.
I have a funny feeling that nobody would care if Facebook went away. Not that people don't enjoy it -- I do from time to time. But so few actually use it to network; instead people just interact with people they already know--and many of those people are not actually friends! It would be a relief to many people if FB shut down.
One should also consider what students actually need email for versus the needs social networks fulfill for them. Teens, or "Generation Z" don't all yet hold jobs and need to communicate with dozens of colleagues (and professors, if they're in college) in a simple, professional format.
Most workplaces have protocol about staff communication, and even the firms most open to new technology where employees can twitter and IM each other and stay connected through mobile devices still require some semblance of formality for much of its communication. Email serves that purpose. There are communications that just don't belong on your Facebook page, not to mention how much easier it is to sort and organize a good email system (I'm thinking of Gmail/Googlemail).
Until high schools go more digital, I expect intensive use of email for communication to remain one of the marks of having graduated into the "real world" of work an higher education.
This study's results don't gibe with recent experience for me. I work in higher ed. After a swine flu outbreak last year that made the news we worked on collecting better emergency contact info from our students. We started needing info from ~1700 students, and after several emails from the college we were down to ~600 students with missing info. No number of subsequent emails could tease it out of them. We tried a number of experiments to 'force' these students to respond, and it was only at the point that we intercepted their logins to our network services and told them via infographic that they would lose access to facebook/the college internet connection did we get the last several hundred to respond.
More broadly it's been our experience that it's very hard to get the students to attend to the emails we send them, and we've been experimenting with various communication strategies to address this.
Why can't they co-exist? This is exactly why created www.inbox2.com.
Ehm...maybe the media coverage is because email is been invented 35 years ago while facebook got 300.000.000 users in the last 5 years??
...you know...the word "news"...what does that refer to...?
Besides that, nobody would give up email cause is necessary in everyday life and is plain and efficent communication (same applies to SMS). Facebook is engagement, is something you do because you enjoy it not because you need it.
This makes it much more interesting for advertising purposes.
Honestly, I do not think I could give up either permanently.
I have gotten so used to being able to connect with friends I can't meet up with (namely because they are in different states) via Facebook, and I would HATE to lose that connection.
But email is vital too, for more business related issues.
The idea of 'having' to give either up eludes my mind. I actually can't picture it.