According to statistics from AOL’s Corporate Newsroom in their 45th (?) Annual Email Addiction Survey in 2009, 62% of at-work email users check work email over the weekend, and 19% check it five or more times in a weekend. More than 50% said they check it on vacation, with the highest amount coming from mobile device users at 78%. In another AOL Opinion Research Study in 2007, they reported that:
- 15% of Americans say they are addicted to email.
- 59% of those using portable devices check email as it arrives.
- 43% of users sleep near their email unit to hear incoming messages.
- 40% consider email accessibility when they plan a trip.
- 83% check their email once a day while on vacation.
- 43% check their email first thing every morning.
Statistics published by the Radacati group state that the typical corporate email user sends and receives about 110 emails per day. This breaks down into 74 email messages received, 61 of which are legitimate and 13 of which are spam. The average number of emails sent is about 36. Being a bit of a nerd, I went and looked at my own email usage over the last six months and found that on average I sent 25 a day. Because of the way I file emails, I was unable to figure out how many I received but I was able to determine that I deleted 67 per day on average. This means that 67 emails were not important enough for me to save them in folders that I set up for all projects I am working on. Given the total volume I could count, of 92 emails per day, it is likely that I am working at the average of about 110 per day.
Oddly enough 110 emails per day does not sound like all that much. Could you imagine though if you got 110 letters in the mail each day or you got 110 phone calls in a day. You would be absolutely swamped. And guess what? Many of these email users are actually swamped.