The New York Times :
Despite the reasonable qualms of older generations, Generation Z – generally defined as people born between 1997 and 2012 – is pioneering the return of chaotic trends like low-rise jeans, pop-punk and Ed Hardy.
But members of Gen Z do seem to agree with their elders on one thing: Email. Ugh. And, if we’re lucky, maybe they can one day save everyone from overflowing inboxes.
According to a 2020 study from the consulting firm Creative Strategies, there’s a generational gap in primary work tools. The survey found that for those 30 and above, email was among the top tools they used for collaboration. For those under 30, Google Docs was the app workers associated most with collaboration, followed by Zoom and iMessage. Adam Simmons, 24, prefers to communicate using “literally anything but email.” Simmons, who is based in Los Angeles, started a video production company after graduating from the University of Oregon in 2019. He primarily communicates with his eight employees and his clients, which are mostly sports teams, over text, Instagram and Zoom.
“Email is all your stressors in one area, which makes the burnout thing so much harder,” he said. “You look at your email and have work stuff, which is the priority, and then rent’s due from your landlord and then Netflix bills. And I think that’s a really negative way to live your life.” The turning point for Simmons was when a work email from the Seattle Mariners got lost in his spam folder. “It’s actually crazy how outdated it is,” he said of email, becoming increasingly animated during the interview that we set up over text.
He noted that messages show up in spam that aren’t spam and that he has to upload video clips elsewhere before emailing them. “It’s painful to use Google Drive.”
“Part of the whole reason I don’t want to work for someone else is because I don’t want to constantly check my email and make sure my boss didn’t email me,” Simmons said. “That’s the most stressful thing.”
Inbox stress is, of course, not unique to people born after the email rom-com “You’ve Got Mail” hit theatres (’98) or who were entering kindergarten at the dawn of the Gmail era (2004).
In April, in response to a reader callout on pandemic burnout, The New York Times received dozens of messages specifically about email, or what one reader described as “the eternal chore.” Another said: “It has, on the worst days, brought me to tears.”
