Well, the future is always now. Remember that guy at the office that asked you to explain e-mail to him last week? The guy in the Member's Only jacket? Well, tell him to skip e-mail and go right to social networking sites, Instant Messaging and chatting on his cell phone. Because that's the way of he future, it appears.
Like instant messages, text messages pop up immediately, and with a few deft strokes the receiver can reply right away. ``E-mail is more like snail mail. You don't know when they're going to get it,'' said Alex Stikeleather, 17, of Palo Alto.
Since February, teen e-mail use nationwide has been dropping compared with a year earlier. In April, it was down 8 percent -- 11.8 million users compared with 12.8 million users in April 2005, according to comScore Media Metrix. Even though the average time spent online by teens increased 11.6 percent from April 2005, to 22.5 hours a month, time on Web mail declined 9 percent.