A new study shows more than three-quarters of Canadians prefer using email as a communication tool to writing a traditional letter.
An MSN Canada/ Ipsos-Reid poll reveals that 78 per cent of Canadians prefer email over the 28 per cent of those who prefer regular mail. The poll also found that 8 in 10 use email to send or receive photos; 12 per cent use it to send engagement invitations; and that 10 per cent send electronic wedding invitations.
Hotmail, which is owned by Microsoft, is celebrating its 10th anniversary Monday.
Along with the advent of other free email services such as Yahoo, Hotmail helped to usher email to mass appeal through its ease of use and the ability to allow email to be accessed from everywhere.
"Over the past decade, Canadian consumers have come to rely on email, and it's difficult to imagine a world without it. It has affected the way we communicate and interact with family and friends and has helped to perpetuate today's information-on-demand lifestyle," University of Waterloo professor Neil Randall said in the report.
But email is also used to fire employees and end relationships with significant others, leading to many concerns about the use of the communication tool.
"The downside of it, of course, is that you can get a little impersonal or you can get too personal at times when you shouldn't be personal," Randall told Canada AM.
The poll suggests that 76 per cent of Canadians are storing their email inboxes by archiving these important messages, documents and photos.
"Email has evolved to become much more than just a medium in which we communicate," Randall said in the report. "We are now building `virtual museums' or `digital archives' and also managing our personal lives with these Web-based services."
The study also found that British Columbians were the first to get email and were the most laid-back when it came to its use.
Other results showed that 58 per cent of middle-aged people and 43 per cent of those who were 55 and over have email.
