This piece really hit home for me. I spent a month interviewing teens and young adults about their digital communication habits and can say that your sister's usage is very representative.

Re email - it's no surprise that 15 year-olds rarely use email, but I'm not sure they're suddenly going to warm up to it when they go to college. I had many college students tell me that they rarely use email socially; they just see it as something associated with school.

Might email be dying? It seems like email is to 15 year-olds what physical mail is to a 30 year-olds — a thing of the past.

Glad it resonated with you!

I think we'll see re: email in a few years. My bet is no, though...

I may've been too dramatic...email will definitely endure for many use cases. If the trend continues, however, its use as a personal/social communication tool is doomed.

Wes, I'd be really interested to see the results of your interviews. Are they published somewhere?

I'm in charge of the social media team for an academic library, and I just shared Josh's post with a bunch of other librarians. I'll be fascinated to see their responses. :D

Facebook is still big with college students. I watch computer screens as I walk around, and most of our students seem to still be using it. It'll be interesting to watch it fade.

I'll miss Twitter, though, when it goes. Email, less so, /if/ it goes. (30 year olds still send paper mail, socially, after all. :))

Coral, the interviews were just for my own product research, so they're not published anywhere.

A few of interesting takeaways:

- There were surprisingly few differences between College and High School social media habits. More twitter and 4SQ in college.
- (Echoing Josh's article) FB not cool anymore, but they still find themselves on it all the time.
- "Email is just something you use to sign up for stuff." That's how one 15 year-old put it, and I saw similar sentiment going all the way up to college seniors.
- Self-validation is very important. Teens often perceive posts that don't get "likes" on Instagram or Facebook to be failures. (this helps explain the success of Snapchat, since there's no pressure for quality content)

That's really interesting! Thank you for sharing.

They still do 4SQ? Huh. I keep expecting that to die out.

Over the past year I've noticed my sister, who goes to hs in California, using Instagram more and more to the point where I don't see her use any other app. Like you mentioned its not only for landscapes anymore but for taking pictures of friends and that has bled into how many of my peers, I'm in college, use Instagram now. FB was smart to purchase Instagram if not only for the way people are using Instagram for taking photos now but also for the shear time battle FB would have had with Instagram.

Your sisters comments seem to be dead on about Tumblr as well since I've seen my cousin who is in middle school use Tumblr religiously while my sister finds no real use in it. Curious why that form of expression resonates with younger children.

Also with Snapchat I've found it interesting that many reporters have pitted it as either a sexting app or an app for young children who want to be silly. In my experience I've found its used most commonly among my peers, college aged, basically to waste time and talk. While that does make it a communication tool it also makes me think the entertainment factor will wear off to the point where people just revert back to text conversations exclusively.

Agreed re Snapchat - unless they have some grand vision up their sleeve, the novelty of ephemeral messages will wear off/be integrated as a standard feature in messaging apps.

The idea of Tumblr being uncool with high schoolers is surprising to me. It's super popular with my female friends (urban 20-somethings), and Garry Tan's data (blog.garrytan.com) shows that it's even more popular with high schoolers.

Where does your sister live, Michael? My guess is that Josh's sister's experience has to do with being in LA. Teens hop onto trends VERY early there, so it's no surprise that Tumblr is already a thing that's "just for middle schoolers."

Email is certainly ripe for reinvention, but it is not going anywhere soon at least for people 20+. It is entwined with too many official (not necessarily social) uses that can't all be replaced or augmented by the highly specialized functions of social apps like Instagram or Snapchat, Email is certainly ripe for reinvention, but it is not going anywhere soon at least for people 20+. It is entwined with too many official (not necessarily social) uses that can't all be replaced or augmented by the highly specialized functions in Instagram or Snapchat, Tumblr, Twitter, or Facebook.

Most people still exchange physical mail and gifts on special occasions. If you've only posted on someone's FB wall for the past decade, r u really friends?

My sister is actually from LA as well so your right she may be suffering from the same bias. It's interesting because my girlfriend who's not really into social media uses tumblr quite often for consumption purposes and I've also seen people highly targeted into certain topics like anime use it. Older people do seem to use it but for the most part it seems lost among the HS to early college demo in my opinion. Unless you count the occasional viewing of the what should we call me tumblr. I'm curious how no one claims to use it yet the numbers for the product seem are so high. Is it uncool for some reason?