The art of correspondence faces another rude shove towards oblivion: even e-mail is getting the big E for being "too formal."
Outside of work, SMS and instant messaging are fast becoming the writing tools of choice. Indeed, South Korea - that crystal ball of all our digital tomorrows - has even seen a report that many teenagers have stopped using it altogether. "It's for old people," they say.
The poll, taken recently in Seoul of more than 2,000 middle, high school and college students, revealed that over two-thirds rarely or don't use e-mail at all.
Korea's digital generation is way ahead of even the Japanese in new technology uptake: 50 percent of South Koreans are signed up to their version of Facebook, called Cyworld, which took off almost a decade before other social networking sites. For most South Koreans, e-mail is fit only for addressing the old, or for business and formal missives.
Even those in their 30s like Youngmi Kim, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, says she doesn't use it much when communicating with fellow Koreans. "I use my Cyworld mini homepage to communicate among Korean close friends. [Cyworld] is faster and it can be used both for private and public use," she says.
It's a global trend, but more pronounced in South Korea, says Tomi Ahonen, communications consultant and co-author of a new book, Digital Korea. "Korean young adults put it so well. E-mail is simply outdated and not used between friends and colleagues. The only people you would use mobile e-mail with are the older generation at work. E-mail? It's so Nineties."
Too lazy to e-mail
According to the poll, mobile texting, instant messaging and the perception that e-mail is "a lot of bother" are all contributing to the end of the e-mail era. Other factors, say the report, are the difficulty of ascertaining if an e-mail has arrived and the lack of immediate response. One young Korean also described how texting felt like a ping-pong game and how e-mail was more "like doing homework."
Similar bugbears are driving e-mail use down elsewhere as the twin gods of ease and instant gratification become more dominant globally, says Ahonen. "This phenomenon is not limited to South Korea. We are even seeing the first signs of it in America - a country that is a leader in e-mail and wireless e-mail, and the laggard in mobile. It started with the young abandoning e-mail in favor of texting, and since then the youth preference has spread and is now hitting the mainstream age groups."
Texting's immediacy, privacy and personalization, combined with the increasing trend to see the mobile as talismanic - a personal touchstone requiring immediate attention at every trill - means SMS is proving the most potent e-mail slayer. A typical e-mail is read within 24 hours and responded to within 48 hours. A typical SMS is read within a minute and responded to within five, says Ahonen.
We're also becoming more reliant on it. According to Ofcom, UK citizens now send on average 40 texts a week - that's up a third from a year ago. The number of phone calls made per week is also down.
"The privacy aspect of SMS versus e-mail is also important," says Ahonen. "E-mail is very open: you might have others walking by the computer screen at an open office or in an Internet cafe. The PC you use may be shared, such as those at a university or at the office, or the home family PC. And the e-mail service itself is often monitored at work for example."
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