Apophenia explains (as pointed to by Stephanie Booth today)
“Academics have been noting that young people’s social and emotional energies have been moving from email to IM.
Do young people have email accounts? Yes. Do they login to them semi-regularly? Yes. Do they use it as their primary form of asynchronous communication for talking with their friends? No.”
As usual, the teens are ahead of us. It will be interesting how the trend evolves as IM finally starts to wash across the business world… (in some ways RIM’s are already the business medium of choice for the really important/juicy missives, the school yard gossips of the working world are they not?)
See the same meme from earlier this year: “Teens: Email is for old people” on Ars.