“I go on Instagram or LinkedIn. It works better. They don’t even check emails sometimes. We have about 20,000 who we know don’t check even one email per month. They’re 25, they don’t care. They don’t go on their emails, they go on Snapchat, they go on all these things,” Delaporte said.
I’m not 25, but I’d like to point out that I, too, do not care. And I think Delaporte is right and, despite my best efforts, I’m not that special.
Email may not be dead - but it’s no longer the best way to get an online message across, especially if that message is important.
The first signs of this appeared when people started adding “important - please read” to their subject lines. They were doing this because they know just how many emails go unread. Like all things though, the “important - please read” message in the subject line has since become overused (mostly because of how subjective the concept of “importance” is), and you’re now at risk of your message sitting there unread too, even if you do add that in.
Like Delaporte, Vimeo’s chief executive Anjali Sud also knows the days of email are over. She described it as a crisis, as bosses do not know how to communicate with their younger workers.
“I don’t think most leaders feel equipped to do that. It’s not a skill-set that most of us moved up the ranks being great at,” Sud said, during a panel on quiet quitting at Davos.
A few recent studies have confirmed that younger workers are moving away from email.
One study, by Rival Tech and Reach3 Insights, showed that 56 per cent of millennials and 67 per cent of Gen Z “rarely” or “never” use email as a tool to communicate with friends and family.
I’m usually a pessimist but, for once, I don’t feel like the situation is quite as catastrophic as some would want you to believe, and the eventual demise of email might not be a bad thing at all.
Let’s face it: emails suck. Our inboxes are overflowing with junk. Junk we signed up for (to get that initial 10 per cent discount), spam we never agreed to receiving - just overall a whole load of absolute unnecessary rubbish. As a tool for work and life management, email is just... too much. Moving away from a tool that chaotic cannot be a bad thing.
Interviewed by the New York Times in 2021, Adam Simmons, 24, said that he preferred to communicate using “literally anything but email”.
He went on to describe email as “all your stressors in one area, which makes the burnout thing so much harder”.
“You look at your email and have work stuff, which is the priority, and then rent’s due from your landlord, and then Netflix bills. And I think that’s a really negative way to live your life,” he added.
As the New York Times piece goes on to point out, email is, for many, “the eternal chore”. Catching up on emails involves replying to emails which, in turn, just generates more emails. How was this ever considered a productivity tool?
I have, on busier days, found myself avoiding my inbox. I put off replying to emails from friends because the simple act of dealing with my inbox can sometimes feel anxiety-inducing. To a certain degree, inbox anxiety is not that far from the same anxious feeling some of us get whenever we have to answer a phone call. Switching off notifications on my phone for my email has often felt like an act of self-care.
There is also a rigidity and an etiquette to emailing that simply does not exist when messaging someone via text or on platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp, Slack, or Messenger. In those, you can be more casual, more relaxed, while still getting the message across effectively.
This is not a new phenomenon. Much has been written about the “tyranny of email” and the curse of “inbox-zero” as a productivity goal. Constant interruptions from our inboxes have contributed to the erosion of our ability to concentrate, which ultimately can contribute to anxiety and burnout.
But it’s not all bad news for email lovers everywhere. Newsletters have seemingly replaced blogs as platforms for writers to disseminate their content. Sites like Substack allow independent writers to publish directly to their audience, get paid through subscriptions and get analytics on how their content is received.
Overall, it does feel like the email has been going the way of the fax machine for a while, particularly as instant messaging tools become more and more mainstream. For now, it is no longer the ubiquitous communication tool it once was, but there’s still a role for email to play. Just make sure you’re not using it for anything urgent. If you want your message to get through to that person, you’d better not email them.
Ultimately, what we are experiencing is a cultural shift. In that sense, it really does not matter what older generations think of younger workers’ move away from email. Youths are gonna youth, and the old man can keep yelling at the clouds - or better yet, email someone about it.
