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I'm somewhere in between the group of (mostly young) people who have an email address only because they're required to have one in order to receive password reset emails, boring notes from their teacher, and perhaps the bi-annual long letter from their grandmother (to which they're inclined never to reply), and the group who prefer email above anything else, and perhaps even use their phone as - gasp! - a telephone!
Coincidentally, I'm also in between those two groups age-wise, and I think that has something to do with it. I was 18 the first time I connected to the Internet, so I have a clear memory of the days before the (widespread) Internet, but I'm also young enough to have adapted to the new way of things where so many things happen on computers that used to be done in the physical world.
Maybe that's the reason I like both email and instant messaging. I engage in epistulary email-writing with a few select friends regularly, and everyday chit-chat with a substantially larger group of friends via instant messaging. I prefer instant messaging to phone calls in most situations, because it's more private in a public space like the bus, and also I don't disturb everyone around me like I would do if I were talking on the phone.
I refrained from using FB Messenger for a very long time, because I didn't (and don't) like Facebook per se, but when they separated Messenger from Facebook I found it much easier to engange with my friends regularly through there than through email, and I wouldn't have to look at photos of their cats and what they had for dinner last night.
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