I'm Officially Old

ars technica reports e-mail is out of style with teens. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, "teenagers preferred new technology, like instant messaging or text messaging, for talking to friends and use e-mail to communicate with 'old people.'"

Waaaaaa!

A report on teen Internet habits conducted by Pew Internet & American life confirms it. The report found 87 percent of teenagers in the US now use the Internet, and many of them prefer instant messaging to e-mail.

According the report, "Teens who participated in focus groups for this study said that they view e-mail as something you use to talk to 'old people,' institutions, or to send complex instructions to large groups. When it comes to casual written conversation, particularly when talking with friends, online instant messaging is the clearly the mode of choice for today's online teens."

As a result, colleges are reeling, trying to discover new ways to communicate with students after finally getting the e-mail thing down.

For some schools, the correct answer is: set up a MySpace page. After all, there's nothing hipper for students than being "friends" with your college registrar or school principal. The intriguing thing about this method of reaching students is that it's most often not "instant" at all; students receive messages when they log in or they visit the school's MySpace pages—the equivalent of using e-mail and a Web portal.

The kiss of death are these words from The Mercury News: "For those of you who have just figured out how to zap spam or manage your inbox, prepare for the bad news: E-mail is, like, so yesterday."

Sad but true.