Is there an email generation gap?

My two daughters, ages twelve and fourteen, are immersed in
technology.

They are almost always on IM. When away from the computer and on-the-go,
they text message their friends with their cell phones.

They both frequent social networking sites like Facebook and
MySpace. They have multiple online
personas. They play games online.

They are all about having the latest ring tones for their
cell phones, and iTunes songs for their iPods. 

Yet one thing I have not seen them adopt to any great degree
is email.

Sure, they have multiple email accounts. But notes from friends and family languish in
their email systems unread.

Could it be that email is too slow (or broken) for this new
generation?

Thinking that I was on to something, I decided to employ the
latest in multivariate statistical analysis to confirm my theory. Said another way, I wanted to elucidate the
apparent phenomenological connection and do so through sophisticated stochastic
processes.

Or perhaps I could just ask them.

The conversation with my younger daughter went something like this:

Dad:    Do you find email useful?
Daughter:     It’s OK
Dad:    How often do you check your email?
Daughter:    Why are you asking me this?
Dad:    Market research on the cheap, please answer the question.
Daughter:     About once a day.
Dad:    Is that it?  Why not more often?
Daughter:    I dunno

The dialog was much the same as my older daughter (they are both a little amused, curious and sometimes irritated by being my most convenient new generation focus group), except it turns out she checks her email once every three days.

Although these two have not totally abandoned email,  frequencies of checking email once every three days, or even daily seems light for  the majority of us who live in email these days.

And I have a feeling that their experiences are not atypical; email is an inherently social communications technology.  If their friends were using email more, and if they needed to communicate via email for school, I am sure they would be sending and accessing email more often.

They say the youth are setting the pace in technology these days, so I believe this is a phenomenon worth watching closely.