The kids have spoken — and they did it via MySpace instead of Outlook:

“I only use e-mail for my business and to get sponsors,” Martina Butler, the host of the teen podcast Emo Girl Talk, said during a panel discussion here at the Mashup 2007 conference, which is focused on the technology generation. With friends, Bulter said she only sends notes via a social network.

“Sometimes I say I e-mailed you, but I mean I Myspace’d or Facebook’ed you,” she said.

To be sure, much has been written about the demise of e-mail, given the annoyance of spam and the rise of tools like instant messaging, voice over IP and text messaging. But e-mail has hung on to its utility in office environments and at home, even if it’s given up some ground to new challengers. It may be that social networks are the most potent new rival to e-mail, one of the Internet’s oldest forms of communication. With tens of millions of members on their respective networks, MySpace and Facebook can wield great influence over a generation living online, either through the cell phone or the Internet.

To me, this development suggests a reversion of sorts for email, regardless of the motivation. Despite its purpose as “electronic mail” that delivers far faster than the Post Office, email’s format still suggests a framework of formality: Writing a letter in the sense that conversational back-and-forth is a little awkward to carry out; archiving into Sent, Received, etc. folders that imply a need to organize. This is indeed a good setup for business dealings that require record-keeping. But for social interaction? It’s a drag.

So the perception of email moves more toward a business-only tool. IM and texting, with it’s seemingly more free-wheeling structure, is more suited toward casual, everyday chit-chat (even though you can indeed archive conversations, unbeknownst to most users; and don’t forget the threat of spim!).

I’m still holding out against the un-email options, but it’s clearly a losing battle. I’m kinda hoping telepathy pops up sooner rather than later, so I won’t have to bother…