I’m not sure which came first, the idea that social media is killing blogs or social media is killing email. Both arguments are brought up every so often, and both are equally ludicrous if you ask me. Earlier this week, we examined the former, and interestingly enough, the latter was also brought up by recent data from comScore and the Pew Internet Project. 

Actually, it was The Discovery Channel, who looked at the data and asked, "Is email dead?" 

Is Email dying at the hands of social networks and texting? Tell us what you think.

"Overall, when you look at how many teens have ever sent an e-mail, it’s most of them, so it’s still being used," said Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist with the Pew Internet Project. "It just isn’t used for communicating with people you’re primarily communicating with in your life, namely your friends, and it’s absolutely true that text messaging and messaging through social networks has supplanted e-mail messaging to friends."

People might turn more and more to social networks for casual conversations, link sharing, and things like that, but call me when your banking and all your professional communicating are done through Facebook. In fact, call me when you receive notifications from all the social media sites you participate on are sent to your Facebook account (unless you count Facebook’s new email service). The jury’s still out on Facebook’s new messaging system, but let’s not forget, it launched with Facebook.com email addresses. 

Is mobile killing email? Not so much. Recent data, also from comScore finds that mobile email usage is seeing significant growth. 

Email will continue to evolve, but it’s not going away – at least not in the foreseeable future. If social media’s going to kill email, it’s going to have to do a lot better than what it does so far. 

If anything, social (along with mobile) is helping email.