Social Norms
There are plenty of ways to get in touch with people these days. There are certain activities that are usually associated with each one. For example, you wouldn't ask somebody to marry you in an email, and driving across town to say "Hi" is usually a bit excessive. I think the list goes something like this:
- Face to face contact
- Phone call
- Handwritten letter
- Email
- Social networking site private message (Facebook, MySpace, etc)
- Instant message
- Cell phone text message
- Facebook poke
When you have news to share or business to take care of, you scan down the list and choose the appropriate form of communication. Usually you choose the lowest one on the list that is acceptable because it gets more time consuming the farther you go up the list.
But who decides what types of communication are acceptable for each medium? Is there some secret society making these rules?
Clearly it largely depends on the person you're talking to. I'd never send Grandma a text message because anything below level 3 will wither away in the electronic ether before it gets read. On the flip side, if I'm chatting with a high school kid, a text message is completely acceptable for a large number of situations.
It's interesting to watch how this changes through the years. It used to be that anything serious relating to a girl was only allowed to be communicated face to face. Now a phone call suffices and it's easy to dip pretty far down on that list for a lot of conversations.
I suppose in the end it boils down to the relationship you have with the recipient and the news you are delivering. If you are close to them, you can get away with just about anything. If they don't like you, or if you're delivering bad news, you're probably going to get into trouble no matter what you do. It's more important to focus on your message than on your means of delivery. We have so many ways to communicate that it's what you say, not how you say it.