Is e-mail already old-fashioned?

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Peter Deng isn’t big on e-mail.

The problem, he explains, is that the format is too, well, formal.

“I use e-mail really sparingly,” says the 17-year-old from Elk Grove, Calif.

E-mail, he explains, is reserved for communicating with teachers or — oh, the irony — getting MySpace and Facebook notifications.

Deng’s pal Terren Wing sees it this way: E-mail offers less convenience.

“I’m just attached to my cell phone,” explains Wang, 16. “I really only use e-mail for (sending) attachments or keeping up with (school) assignments.”

Deng and Wing aren’t the only teens shunning e-mail in favor of other platforms such as texting, instant messaging and the social networking sites Facebook and MySpace.

A pair of 2007 studies conducted by the Pew Internet &American Life Project showed that teens are steadily drifting away from the “old-fashioned medium” of e-mail.

While 92 percent of surveyed adults said they regularly used e-mail, only 16 percent of teens made it a part of daily life while text messaging (36 percent), instant messaging (29 percent) and social network site messaging (23 percent) gained in popularity.

As teens, twentysomethings and, increasingly, other generations bypass their in-box in favor of other formats, is e-mail endangered?

“I don’t see it as being phased out — it’s still important,” Deng says. “(But) texting is simpler; you can just say, ‘What’s up?’ An e-mail should be of a more decent length.”

Wing also uses LiveJournal to bypass formalities through blog posts and a comments section.

“We used to just yell at each other — ‘Why haven’t you returned my call?’ — now my friends have blogs (and) we use them to catch up.”

The behavioral shift isn’t entirely generational. As e-mail in-boxes overflow with spam, cute-kitten photos, viral video links and all those newsletters you forgot signing up for, we’re seeking faster ways to digitally interact.

For Mark Eagleton, e-mail is the form of last resort.

“I rely pretty heavily on (instant messaging),” says the 35-year-old computer programmer, who works in Sacramento.

“My inbox is filled. I get something like 200 to 500 messages a day; there’s just too much to go through,” he says. “E-mail is usually only for sending stuff to family (members) or a lot of people at once.”

Don’t write e-mail’s obituary, yet.

“The death of e-mail has been greatly exaggerated,” says Steve Jones, a senior research fellow with the Pew Internet &American Life Project.

One advantage of e-mail is that users can respond to it more leisurely than messages from other platforms, which often require immediate attention.

“With IM there’s the expectation that you’ll always be there, that you’ll answer right away,” he said. “The more people you communicate with, the more you’re always on. And that can get pretty exhausting.”

And, he adds, although many view e-mail as something quaintly formal, it’s an office mainstay.

“It’s easily saved, stored and searched (and) it provides a record of our conversations in ways that some other mediums can’t,” Jones says. “It’s considered as good as paper in a business sense.”