You’ve got mail, but who’s got the rules?
In the Stone Age of Internet technology, roughly seven to 10 years ago, your basic computer geeks would slavishly reel off e-mail replies as fast as their fingers could tap-dance across the keyboard. The daunting task often devoured the evening until finally the last e-mail was sent or exhaustion took over.
But in today’s postmodern wireless world, the same now ex-geeks, probably retired millionaires or your bosses, are pushing back against the Sisyphean chore of e-mail. Nearly two-thirds of experienced computer users delay returning personal e-mails from one to three days, when they once would have immediately responded. Sometimes, it’s even up to a week, and all, in perhaps an ultimately vain attempt, to reclaim their personal lives. Meanwhile, e-mail novices usually reflect the mentality of their forebears by constantly firing back replies.
That’s just one nugget panned from a burgeoning, if still limited, body of research centering on e-mail and how this peculiar dues ex machines is rewriting the narrative of everyday life. With the phenomenon still emerging, researchers are just beginning to scrutinize e-mail habits and their psychological and cultural significance. But what’s evident already is that e-mail is transforming personal communication in the same way letter writing and the telephone once did, not to mention changing our behavior in virtually every aspect of our lives, from business to romance, political to personal.
The available research on electronic communication, being done across the country in small pockets of academia and nonprofit groups, identifies a natural gap between the learning of a technology and dealing with its real-life implications. Millions of users, novice and experienced, are trying to find their way in this relatively new medium in terms of language, boundaries and even emotional responses.
Jeffrey Cole, director of the University of Southern California’s Center for the Digital Future, likens the impact of the Internet and e-mail to the almighty television and predicts they could someday rival that of the printing press. Research shows e-mail is off to a promising start -- it’s currently the No. 1 online activity and is used by more than 70% of all Americans, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a nonprofit initiative funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Initial research focused on the rate of e-mail’s rapid expansion -- sometimes referred to as the “gee whiz” phase -- and the fairly obvious reasons for it, namely, it was the next best thing to not being there. Convenient, immediate and efficient, the new form of communication quickly attracted notice for its ability to reshape basic societal organizations.
Its growing reach can easily be seen -- the widespread practice of setting business appointments via e-mail (thus reducing phone tag), the soaring use of e-file tax returns, the unexpected success of Howard Dean’s presidential campaign and the creation of social networks that otherwise would be extremely difficult or impossible, like say a support group for twin-engine pilots or needlepoint enthusiasts, to name a few.
A second wave of research is delving deeper into these trends with a particular eye toward the psychology of e-mail. Thus far, the message seems to be that although e-mail is far and away a benefit, it does have its downside. For instance, e-mail often widens social networks, but users are finding out there can be a price for tracking down and reestablishing ties with old friends.
“We’re really starting to see the blush come off this rose,” said Deborah Fallows, a senior researcher on the Pew Project. “At first it’s a thrill, and then there’s this ‘Uh-oh, I have to keep in touch with these people again’ feeling.”
Closer attention is being paid as well to what e-mail does to personality. Staring at a computer screen, usually in isolation, constitutes a distinct psychological environment, one that lowers inhibitions, argues Patricia Wallace, a psychologist and author of “The Internet in the Workplace: How New Technology is Transforming Work.” As such, e-mail users are often more aggressive, even more intimate, than they should be.
“You’re not watching another face or listening to a voice for a nuanced expression,” said Wallace, senior director of information technology and distance learning at the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “You can’t see or hear the things that can inform you, like a thermostat, about what the norms of behavior should be.”
Without those common visual and aural cues to help convey meaning, e-mails can easily be misinterpreted even if the language is precise. Office e-mails have become so problematic that most workplaces are now legally obligated to monitor them, despite protests from privacy organizations. Over the past decade, a series of prominent state and federal cases on hostile work environments have tagged employers with the responsibility of monitoring employee e-mail.
“No matter how many times people are warned e-mail is archived and that they could be sued for it later in a trial, they still say things in them they would never say face-to-face or in a meeting,” Wallace added. “It’s just so easy to click and send.”
Read between the lines
More common, however, are simple -- and innocent -- miscommunications among friends. As they often had, Phil Van Allen and a friend arranged through a series of back-and-forth e-mails to meet for dinner. Somewhere along the thread, the friend had thought she’d made it clear that she couldn’t make it. Van Allen, a faculty member at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, didn’t read it that way, and felt stood up.
“Probably if she had been saying those things to me over the phone or face-to-face, the intent would have been clearer,” Van Allen said. “But I didn’t get that from her e-mail.”
Much of the confusion associated with personal e-mails is simply the result of not having an established etiquette on the frontier of cyberspace. Estimates are it will take years to resolve basic questions such as: how often should e-mail be checked, how quickly should a reply be sent, what is appropriate material for an e-mail, and what are ethical uses of cc-ing?
One area undergoing some change is the “thank you” note. In recent years, a thank you via e-mail -- instead of one by snail mail -- is becoming more accepted, especially with the plethora of gift-giving occasions -- housewarming, baby showers, going-away parties, etc.
“I always feel like I should send a handwritten note,” said Chris Angelli, a Santa Monica resident, who also sent birth announcements for her children via e-mail. “But there’s a good chance there won’t be a thank you at all if I wait that long.”
The rise in popularity of instant messaging and Blackberries -- the hand-held device that instantly updates your e-mails and enables you e-mail back -- are further complicating the creation of an acceptable protocol, although it’s almost a certainty that poor spelling and bad grammar won’t count against you. Indeed, prohibitions may even be placed on the mere appearance of the hand-held Blackberry, often jokingly referred to as ‘crackberry’ for its addictive qualities.
Not surprisingly, e-mail’s penchant for promoting errors or faux pas of one kind or another has led to countermeasures to prevent them. One is a software program called Eudora, whose MoodWatch feature flags an e-mail sender (and receiver) with one, two or three chili peppers when potentially inappropriate words or phrases are being used. For instance, trying to e-mail a message with “scum sucking loser” in it would trigger a “Mood Warning!” box with two chili peppers to pop up on your screen.
Yes, you can still send the message, but you’ve been warned.
“I remember a world before e-mail where when you wrote things down or dictated them, you just had more time to catch things,” said Bill Ganon, vice president of Eudora Products Group in San Diego.
Of course, avoiding a face-to-face meeting can take the sting out of some of life’s most potentially embarrassing moments. As hard as it may be to believe for job candidates, managers do not relish the rejection process. And as job hunters know all to well, in the days before e-mail, prospective employers often avoided informing a candidate of their rejection altogether.
“E-mail at least means you’re more likely to be told you’re not getting the job rather then being left to figure it out for yourself,” said Cole, whose ongoing Digital Future Project has been tracking the year-to-year impact of online technology in more than 2,000 households across the United States for the past five years. “We’re more likely to get that answer because it’s less painful to give.”
Similarly, the dating manual is being rewritten as well. It’s now commonplace for people to ask out a prospective date via e-mail or instant messaging.
E-mails aren’t always the bearer of bad news, in fact, they are increasingly used for just the opposite reason. Even five years ago, getting accepted into a college or university stood out as life-changing event always delivered with the quiet dignity of the U.S. mail. No more: The bulk of students now get the news in their in-box.
“To think such a major life moment could be sent in an e-mail,” Fallows said, “that’s a cultural moment and it opens the door to accepting more formal messages like a wedding invitation.”
Don’t worry, at least for the next couple of days anyway, it’s still considered bad manners to send wedding announcements by e-mail.
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Words by the gigabyte
On an average day, about 77 million American adults go online. E-mail and instant messaging are the most popular activities. Some other e-mail numbers:
Checking In
* 62% of all e-mail users say they check their e-mail once a day.
* 33% of e-mail users say they check e-mail several times a day, or every hour or more.
Response Time
Comparing new users online less than a year versus experienced users with 7 or more years:
* 30% of new users respond to e-mails as soon as possible compared with 14.7% of experienced users.
* 18.9% of new users respond in two or three days compared with 30.8% of experienced users.
Multiple Uses
* 79% of Internet users who say they communicate with friends and family use the Internet for such communications.
* 52% of Internet users who exchange greetings, cards and invitations go online to do so.
* 46% of Internet users who say they plan meetings and arrange personal meetings use the Internet for such purposes.
Sources: “The Digital Future Report,” USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future (2004); “The Internet and Daily Life,” Pew Internet & American Life Project (2004)
