Just part of the E-Mail Generation

The generalional divide is IM/E-Mail -- at least according to this AP Poll.

We've been trying rather unsuccessfully to get a group of newsroom managers to use IM as a speedier way to communicate about breaking news internally. We're in a business where minutes matter. Maybe this explains it. All the recalcitrants are over-40. IM is too far across their generational divide? Early onset of old-fartitis, perhaps.

An AP-AOL poll released Friday says:

- Almost three-fourths of adults who do use instant messages still communicate with e-mail more often. Almost three-fourths of teens send instant messages more than e-mail.

- More than half of the teens who use instant messages send more than 25 a day, and one in five send more than 100. Three-fourths of adult users send fewer than 25 instant messages a day.

- Teen users (30 percent) are almost twice as likely as adults (17 percent) to say they can't imagine life without instant messaging.

- When keeping up with a friend who is far away, teens are most likely to use instant messaging, while adults turn first to e-mail.

- About a fifth of teen IM users have used IM to ask for or accept a date. Almost that many, 16 percent, have used it to break up with someone.

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Tags: instant messaging | IM