The other day I was talking to a sixteen-year-old who I know (I’m pretty hip), and I don’t remember what we were talking about, but at one point I off-handedly said “you know, like after 9/11”. He looked at me blankly and said “I was two on 9/11.”
Wow.
This made me think about two things:
- The fact that I am really behind on doing any kind of long-term financial retirement planning, and
- All of the ways in which life is different for people 10 or 20 years younger than me.
The main obvious difference is our relationship to technology. For example, later millennials (which I basically define as “anyone who doesn’t remember when MTV played music videos”) and post-millennials (whatever we are calling them—Generation Z? The Boomlet Generation? Ugh, please not either of those) have grown up with the Internet, which we didn’t have in my house until halfway through my sophomore year of high school. My big brother was a senior at the time, and his best friend Jimmy was a freshman in college across the country, so my brother and I used to write Jimmy letters. On paper. With stamps. We didn’t do this to be ironic or retro-chic, but because this was how you communicated when your parents wouldn’t spring for long-distance (also, there used to be a thing called “long-distance”).
After writing Jimmy a letter, we would wait, and a week or two later, we would get a letter back, and so on.
And then my parents got us a computer for Christmas and all of the sudden we were sending Jimmy emails and sometimes he would write us back ON THE SAME DAY. It is hard to overstate how amazing this was.
Now of course emails are old hat, and for people who work in the world of email (hi there!) there is some consternation as to whether or not millennials and post-millennials will abandon email altogether in favor of the staggering array of communication options on present and future offer. Can email survive, the worriers wonder, in a world of instant-secret-social-sexy-hip apps and networks?
And to them I answer, “ fear not!” Mostly because I like sounding like a 19th-century superhero, but also because I am not at all worried about millennials etc. ditching email. I think that kids will take email for granted as an essential part of doing business, just like we do, but with one key difference: the email that future generations take for granted will be good email.
We’ve talked here before about how the proliferation of communication options has been a blessing in disguise, since it frees up email to do what email was designed to do, rather than just lamely imitate other services. This premise is essential to Timyo’s mission, and we believe by continuing to improve what email is already good at, we are helping to make sure that email remain a powerful tool for in-depth, formal, and asynchronous communications, no matter how old the sender.
Moreover, we believe that the values that we are striving to incorporate into email are those same values that set apart todays 20-somethings and teens from earlier generations. For millennials, the idea of “work-life balance” isn’t optional or aspirational; it is essential. The office worker of today is anxious and resentful about receiving a must-reply-immediately communication from a boss on the weekend (a text, phone call, or instant message); for the office worker of 10 years from now, it will be a deal breaker.
It’s not that young people will change their habits in order to use email, but that email will change—and is changing—to fit them. For all of the ways that I think that kids younger than me suck (and it’s a pretty long list), one positive attribute they seem to share is a genuine consideration for others. One of the key features that Timyo offers is the ability for senders to clearly and easily let recipients know their expectations for an email—when (and if) they’d like a reply, and otherwise what sort of action they would like to be taken. Our hope is that 10 years from now, it will seem crazy to kids that email didn’t use to provide this option.
And actually, we think it will seem crazy to people much sooner than that. We are excited for this new generation to come of age, and we hope they will find new and improved email a natural fit. We are working to ensure that email will be an invaluable business communications tool for generations to come—no matter what we end up calling them.
