ORLANDO, Fla. – Can you imagine a day without e-mail? One study shows the average worker checks email a whopping 74 times a day. But kids? They've moved on. In fact only 6 percent of teens communicate via email. It's a trend many companies are taking notice of.
[WEB EXTRA: How to categorize your inbox]
Thanks to social media and instant messaging tech-savvy teenager Alex Heston says sending an email is almost like sending a letter.
"If you're trying to uphold a conversation with someone through email. It's a very slow process," said Heston.
His mother Mary, a social media expert, agrees. She prefers collaborative platforms for working on projects with colleagues.
"There are so many new apps out with so many different social platforms, I can totally picture a day when email becomes obsolete," she said.
Software programs such as Slack let employees keep track of projects through real-time messaging and archives.
Asana connects users to an open forum to follow each other's tasks.
And already large companies have adopted these very broad social media platforms that employees are using.
Possibly the best reason to ditch your email?
Professor Gloria Mark says her research shows email can increase stress levels.
"Our research shows over and over again that email simply put, puts people in a bad mood," said Mark.
But productivity expert Mark Hurst says it may be a while before we log out of our accounts for good.
"I like things like Google docs and I think those are going to increase as teams naturally need to collaborate more in digital spaces. On top of that, people are still going to have email inboxes that they need to manage," said Hurst.
And what about all of those subscription emails or emails from companies you've shopped with before?
If you're tired of them there's a simple service called unroll.me.
The service can remove you from email lists or helps you to better categorize your emails.