Will Teens Spurn E-Zines?
Although a new study shows that teenagers prefer instant messaging over e-mail correspondence, there’s no reason to scrap e-mail newsletters just yet.
But email newsletters will have to evolve to serve younger readers.
“Teens and Technology,” a report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, found that the number of teenagers using the internet has grown by 24% in the past four years and that 87% of those between 12 and 17-years-old are online.
These teens see e-mail as a tool for “formal communications,” such as corresponding with adults, teachers, schools and large groups. However, instant messaging (IM) is their favorite channel for everyday conversations with friends.
“This report is the first evidence that suggests that teens are so enamored with instant messages that they frequently choose that for communications,” says Mary Madden, research specialist and co-author of the report. “However with newsletters, that tends to be information mailed out from an organization or community.”
She adds: “For that type of small community or large community information, a lot of teens are using networking tools to set up small networks around certain interests. So there will be a newsletter model where content is delivered into an inbox within the social networking applications like Friendster. Or a popular one with college kids is Thefacebook.”
Madden sees e-mail as still very applicable when considering newsletters that are geared toward professional networks. However she suggests that for smaller networks based around shared interest and hobbies, a lot of those groups are using blogging and social networking tools to share their interests in a richer, more multi-dimensional way. They’re not just sharing text but photos and links to other sties of interest.
Will teens age into the more subdued, less animated mode of communication—e-mail? That’s anyone’s guess right now. But another Pew study fielded in May and June of 2004 showed that 29% of adult Internet users have received news or information from e-mail newsletters or listservs and 15% do so on a typical day.
“I do think that e-mail is starting to feel to teens of today like a one dimensional communications medium,” Madden says. “So in terms of future business models, it makes sense to investigate some new tools that younger Internet users are using to anticipate some of those preferences.”
Pew Internet, fully funded by the Pew Charitable trust is a non-profit that has a grant to study the social impact of the Internet in the United States.
