Why don't kids use email?

We've heard various rumblings in the blogosphere about the death of email for some time. As more people turn to texting and instant messaging for their communication needs, this wasn't completely outlandish, especially for social communications. Where this idea seemed to fall apart was the business world, where IMing your boss just wasn't the same as sending a text to your roommate.

However, if you ask students how often they check their email, you'll probably get answers along the lines of "once in a while" or "I don't have an email account." Kids text, IM, and leave messages for each other constantly on social networking sites. We find kids texting each other from the bathrooms since they obviously can't whip out their phones in class. I tend to insist that papers and assignments be either emailed to me or posted in a digital dropbox, so most of my students grudgingly snag a Gmail account. More often than not, though, if they have homework questions, they'll send me a message through Google's chat facility rather than drop me an email. Why is this?

I have to say, I'm not entirely sure, although it certainly has something to do with "instant gratification." Similarly, chat clients have evolved to such an extent that it is easy for people to receive messages even if they are offline. Google does a nice job of tracking your chats (if you want it to) and recording them as conversations, much like it does for emails. There are plenty of times when a quick IM conversation is useful and convenient, but my advanced age (31 is really old these days) prevents me from envisioning a business situation in which email is abandoned for messaging.

On the other hand, I can't imagine an entire generation of kids who have been raised in a largely email-naive environment walking into the workforce and throwing away their cell phones and IM software in favor of email.

I guess a better question than "Why don't kids use email?" is "How should we be teaching our kids to communicate electronically?" Maybe email really is going to be dead in 5 years. Just because I can't imagine life without Gmail doesn't mean my students can't. If that's the case though, what skills do we need to give them such that business communications don't descend into the pits of IM heck, replete with emoticons and cheesy acronyms? IDK. What's your take on all of this? Talk back below.