As many as half of us fail to properly understand personal e-mails--giving rise to conflicts which may not have occurred if messages had been communicated face-to-face--and blame the resulting confusion for arguments and even relationship break-ups.
The plain text nature of most e-mail means common conversational ploys, such as sarcasm, often do not travel well.
Helen Petrie, professor of Human Computer Interaction at London's City University: "E-mail is a great way to make contact with people and maybe develop a romance. The problem of PPMT we have revealed by these statistics is caused not by e-mail itself, but how people let their anticipation and expectation get the better of them."
Furthermore a massive 61 per cent of e-mail users live in fear of becoming the next Claire Swires, panicking about any personal or sordid information that they include in an e-mail, worried that it may fall into the wrong hands and be circulated. Swires became an overnight celebrity after details of a very personal 'moment' with her boyfriend were forwarded to his friends and then the rest of the world.
According to Yahoo! Mail, who polled 26,000 e-mail users, people can also become obsessed with 'inbox expectations'--constantly opening their inbox to see if a particular e-mail has elicited a response. The survey also revealed that as many as 64 per cent of us have problems concentrating on work if we are waiting for a reply to a specific e-mail.
The findings suggest cyber-slacking is still on the increase for modern office workers and make a further mockery of the idea that e-mail was intended to simplify our lives.
