Out With The Inbox & In With Collaborative Platforms

MIAMI (CBSMiami) - Can you imagine a day without email? One study shows the average worker checks email a whopping 74 times a day!

Yet only six percent of teens are using email to communicate each day.

In fact, more and more companies are leaving email in the past, and leaning towards alternate ways of staying connected.

According to tech savvy teenager Alex Heston, email is old fashioned.

Watch David Sutta's report, click here.

He said between social media and instant messaging, he and his friends have other ways to communicate.

"Email is retro.  It's like sending a letter through the Internet, so if you're trying to uphold a conversation with someone through email.  It's a very slow process," Heston said.

Alex's mother, Mary, a social media expert, agreed. She prefers collaborative platforms for working on projects with colleagues.

"There's so many new apps out with so many different social platforms, I can totally picture a day when email becomes obsolete," Heston's mother said.

Author and productivity expert Mark Hurst isn't convinced email will become entirely a thing of the past, but says the Hestons are on to something.

"Young people today have had unprecedented access to other services beyond just email to communicate with each other," said Hurst. "In business people are using new tools to collaborate beyond just email."

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.

Those are just a few of the options.

"And already large companies have adopted these very broad social media platforms that employees are using.  And it's going to be adopted even more," said Hurst.

If you need a 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.

Hurst said 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.

As for Alex, he has this advice for anyone reluctant to try new platforms:

"Let's keep going towards the future and not hold onto old systems."

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