Email is so over

''No one uses email anymore''

This is the futurespeak gospel according to the Teenager. Email is 'over' apparently. Now it's seemingly far too time consuming to actually type someone's email address into a box, construct a few grammatically complete sentences and hit send.

Dare I venture what the alternative is? I retain some credibility with a correct guess that it's social networking sites and IM that have replaced the retromail. Of course, I don't say 'social networking sites' and 'IM'. These would take far too long. I just say 'Bebo and MSN?' and she grunts ''uh....yeeeeah'' in the kind of patronising drawl you would use with with someone who's frontal lobes have been sliced out.

Call me old fashioned but I am still impressed by the way email flies around cyberspace and lands at it's destination in a second...or 60 or them if you're an Orange broadband customer. I like the way people take their turns to speak, it's very British.

I treat Facebook with a similar distaste to smallpox. Why would I willingly allow all the no doubt hideously unflattering pictures of myself that exist out there to be branded with my name? I have lost count of the amount of times grown adults have begged me..yes begged..to join. I won't kid themselves they want me in their gang, I know they just want to up their 'friends' count. I can't afford another frivolous but delightful waste of time in my life. Asides from my beloved retromail, there is already ebay, popbitch and the Top Shop website. But the friends persist and then they get upset that they can't share their album with 250 pictures of their new baby. Then they send hopeful invitations to join. 'Your saddo mate with too much spare time wants you to poke them on their Facebook profile!'

They send these to my email. See how things come full circle.

My 33 year old brain cannot keep with IM. No sooner have you responded to one question, than the conversation has moved on. IM is nothing more than an intense workout for the fingers. Russians could train armed KGB agents in swift response by simply sitting them in front of MSN for an afternoon. The teenager can shut down around 20 chat boxes in the time it takes me to step over her bedroom* threshold. I guess she does not want her mother to question what the intentions are of the young gentleman who appears to have lost his shirt.

On Monday morning something strange arrives through my letterbox. I open the red hand written envelope with trepidation. Inside is what appears to be a letter from a friend thanking me for her birthday present. Wow. What to do with something that involved a pen and a stationary set? Handling it like a ancient relic I move it to the mantelpiece.

The Teenager scowls at it as she walks past.

I sit down to write an email of thanks.


*slum