Article about the IM Generation

The IM Generation in Charge, an excerpt:

IMers have an active lifestyle; they use multiple means of connectivity at any given time. Their means of digital communication have expanded beyond the e-mail and Usenet messages of the PC Generation, and include text messaging and IM, group messaging on e-mail lists, conversing in chat rooms, posting blogs, Internet telephony, and using webcams to videochat. The Internet—and the mobile phone—also mean that communication between IMers has been transformed from "house-to-house" to the new "person-to-person" paradigm. While most phone calls are still between two people, e-mail and IM make it easy for many persons to communicate at once.

Not only have the means of communication proliferated, but the reach of communication has also increased. It's as cheap to e-mail people across world as it is to email a neighbor. New free Internet phone services like Skype are also encouraging IMers, as well as the rest of us, to communicate more often and (geographically) more widely.