• by Ray Schultz , June 22, 2021

There has been much talk about social media addiction. But what about that other habit-forming channel: Email? Email causes quite as serious a problem as social, judging by the State of Email Addiction in America, a study by TaskHusky. 

The average American spends 1.69 hours a day checking and responding to emails, it says. In contract, a separate study by the Reboot Foundation found that people spend 82 minutes on social per day. 

Of course, this study seems to be talking mostly about work emails.  

Of the consumers polled, 57% feel pressure to reply to emails promptly, and 52.8% respond even to non-urgent emails in less than four hours.  

Among women, 60.5% feel compelled to reply promptly, and so do 51.6% of men. 

Consumers typically check their emails when:

• They’re bored — 75.7%
• On vacation — 69.3%
• Watching TV — 63.5%
• At night and on weekends — 58.9%
• Still in bed in the morning — 50%
• At night when they can’t sleep — 46% 
• Spending time with friends and family — 45.1%

None of this contributes to peace of mind. Indeed, 48.5% feel anxious about unread emails in their inbox, and 60% feel it’s important to have no unread emails at all.  

The Reboot study found that over half of consumers say their social media use contributes to anxiety, depression and low self-esteem at least somewhat in each case. 

The most stressful email activities are:

• Crafting a formal response — 26%
• Responding quickly — 15.3%
• Keeping an organized inbox — 14%

It’s not clear what this means for marketing emails, except that people are more likely to see them if they’re checking their inboxes 24/7.

At work, people prefer communications via:

• Email — 61.9%
• Slack — 12.4%
• In-person meetings — 10.2%
• Phone calls — 9.5% 
• Other — 4.4%
• Zoom — 1.2%
• Project management systems — 0.4%

Is there a regional component to email usage? Here are the states with the most frequent email checks per day:

• Maine — 35
• Iowa — 29.6
• Utah — 22.8
• West Virginia — 21.4% 
• Michigan — 20.7
• Georgia — 17
• Kansas — 16.8
• Minnesota — 16 
• Connecticut — 14.5
• Massachusetts, North Carolina — 14.3

And here are the least active:

• Washington—9.1
• Oregon, Ohio—9.4
• Illinois—9.7
• Maryland—10
• Mississippi—10.3
• Florida, Missouri—10.4
• New Hampshire—10.7
• Alabama—10.8
• Oklahoma, Colorado—10.9
• Virginia—11.1

TaskHusky surveyed 2,342 U.S. consumers in April 2021.