Gen Y would abandon Social Networks before Email or Texting.

The Participatory Marketing Network (PMN), which helps marketers transition from push and permission marketing to participatory marketing, together with its research partner Pace University’s Lubin School of Business’ IDM Lab, announced results from its third Gen Y behavior study. The survey looked at time spent and preference for visiting social networks, reading/writing email, texting, talking on the phone, watching TV, reading magazines and surfing the web (non social media sites). While Gen Y do indeed spend considerable time on social networks, when asked what they would least like to give up for one week, only nine percent said social networks while 26 percent said email and 26 percent said texting.

“These results may be surprising to some, but not if you consider the role email continues to play in the day-to-day lives of Gen Y,” said Michael Della Penna, PMN co-founder and Executive Chairman. “As long as email remains the collection point for social networking updates, including alerts around new followers, discussion updates and friend requests, it will remain a powerful force in marketing and our lives.”

Other notable findings from PMN’s Gen Y research include:

— Email (26 percent) and text messaging (26 percent) are the activities least likely to be “given up for a week,” followed by TV (15 percent), talking on phone (11 percent), visiting social networks (nine percent), reading magazines (seven percent) and visiting non social network sites (six percent).

— Average time spent on social networks per month is 33 hours, compared to 31 hours for email. A difference of two hours per month is unexpectedly small given the disparate media coverage given to Facebook and other social networks.

— Texting remains an important communications tool for Gen Y with the average number of text messages per month exceeding 740.

— Gen Y spend more time emailing, texting and social networking online than talking on the phone, watching TV or reading magazines.

— Interest in mobile marketing remains low among Gen Y, with only one in five now receiving targeted promotional messages and only four percent planning to do so in the future.

For more information at http://www.thepmn.org>