Everyone Has Email. Almost Nobody Uses It Right

by Sergey Kaplich What Makes Email Different Not everyone has TikTok.

Not everyone has Twitter (or X, or whatever we're calling it this week). Not everyone has Facebook, Instagram, or that new app your cousin won't shut up about.

But everyone — and I mean everyone — has an email address.

Email is the most important thing on the internet, and yet somehow we've collectively decided to treat it like that drawer in your kitchen where you throw random batteries, expired coupons, and twist ties.

We ignore it.

We fear it. We let it accumulate 170,183,723 unread messages like some kind of digital hoarder.

This is a guide about email.

Not the boring corporate kind where someone CCs twelve people to ask about printer paper.

The real kind.

The useful kind.

The kind that's been quietly running the internet for decades while we were busy taking selfies (btw do you remember the time when there were NO selfies on the internet?)

Some of them don't even exist anymore. But email?

Email is still here. Email has always been here. Email will be here when we're all cyborgs arguing about neural-link etiquette.

Photos people sent me.

Job offers.

Apartment contracts.

That one recipe for lemon cake my friend's mom sent me in 2013. All official things come through email — documents, confirmations, receipts, that thing you need to prove you actually paid for something three years ago.

And there's another thing nobody tells you about email: it's how you talk to people who matter.

Most of them reply.

You can't DM famous people on Instagram and expect a response, but send them a thoughtful email and suddenly you're having a conversation. Email is the infrastructure of the internet. It's not sexy, but neither is plumbing, and you definitely notice when that stops working. A Brief History Email is older than the internet as we know it. The first email was sent in 1971 by a guy named Ray Tomlinson, who also decided that we should use the @ symbol to separate usernames from host names. Thanks for that, Ray. Truly iconic work. Back then, email was just a way for researchers to leave messages for each other on the same computer network. It wasn't instant. It wasn't fancy. It was just...

useful.

And that usefulness is exactly why it survived. By the 1990s, email became the killer app that got normal people online. Everyone wanted an email address. It was your identity on the internet before social media made "identity" a monetizable data point. And unlike every social platform that's come and gone (RIP Friendster, MySpace, Google+, Vine, and whatever's dying as I write this), email is still here because it's built on open standards. No one company owns email. It just...

exists.

That's the magic. Facebook can shut down tomorrow. Twitter can rebrand itself into oblivion. But email? Email is forever. What Email Is For Email serves a few distinct purposes, and understanding them helps you use it better: Official Communication This is the boring but essential stuff. Your bank sends you statements. The government sends you tax information. Your doctor's office confirms appointments. Your landlord sends you lease agreements. Job offers arrive via email. So do rejection letters, but we don't talk about those. Email is your digital identity for anything official. You can't open a bank account with your Instagram handle. You need an email address. It's the closest thing we have to a universal internet passport. Asynchronous Communication Unlike instant messaging, email doesn't demand an immediate response. You can think before you reply. You can write something longer than three sentences without everyone involved having a panic attack. It's communication with breathing room, which in our current age of constant notifications feels almost luxurious. Documentation and Memory Email is searchable history. Every conversation, every attachment, every confirmation number is sitting there waiting for you to need it. I can search "flight confirmation 2019 Barcelona" and find exactly what I need in three seconds. Try doing that with your WhatsApp messages. I'll wait. Direct Access to Humans This is the underrated one. Email addresses are publicly available in a way phone numbers and social media accounts aren't. You can email authors, entrepreneurs, artists, professors, journalists — anyone really — and there's a decent chance they'll read it. The Problem: Email Overload Here's where most people go wrong. They sign up for everything. Every website wants your email. Every app needs to "send you updates." Every company you bought something from in 2014 thinks you want their newsletter about Memorial Day sales. Before you know it, your inbox has 47,392 unread emails and you've given up. You just let it accumulate. The number becomes meaningless. You miss important things because they're buried under promotional emails about shoes you looked at once. If this is you, let me say this clearly: it's time to declare email bankruptcy. Mark everything as read. Archive it all.

Start fresh.

I'm serious. That number haunting you at the top of your screen is just anxiety made visible. You're not going to go through 47,392 emails. You know it. I know it.

Let it go.

How to Manage Your Email Unsubscribe from Everything You Don't Read Be ruthless. If you haven't opened an email from a company in three months, you don't need their emails. Every legitimate marketing email has an unsubscribe link at the bottom.

Use it.