Should you expect parents to have email?

[rutabowa]

My parents have a shared-name email account from their internet provider, as all older parents should.

 

[killer b]

My parents have a shared-name email account from their internet provider, as all older parents should.

ideally it should be from a long-defunct internet provider, that they now have to pay a ruinous fee every month to keep active

 

[Sue]

More and more people only have a mobile phone so do everything on WhatsApp. Email takes a bit of knowledge to set up whereas with WhatsApp you just need to put in your number.

Young people don't seem to use email. I do some mentoring for a charity and they tell us that they need to persuade kids to get to grips with email if they want to fit in to the world of work.

Yep, even at work (tech company), some of the younger engineers don't check their work email -- if it's not on Slack, it doesn't exist.

 

[rutabowa]

ideally it should be from a long-defunct internet provider, that they now have to pay a ruinous fee every month to keep active

They do not type in ALL CAPS tho.
Tbh lots of old ones are really into WhatsApp these days, particular the overseas old ones. And awful memes

 

[killer b]

my mum is well into whatsapp, and peppers many of her messages with glittery unicorns

 

[klang]

i would have hated my teachers to be in touch with my parents via email. Would have been impossible to intercept. Letters are easy enough to catch, land lines could be unplugged.
Getting regular and honest (unfiltered by me) updates would have caused my parents an unreasonable amount of stress.

 

[maomao]

Emails are harder to ignore than the phone. With the phone you can always turn voicemail off and put it on silent then just ignore anything you don't want to pick up (ie. everything). In comparison it's difficult to pretend you didn't get that email.

 

[Orang Utan]

Emails are harder to ignore than the phone. With the phone you can always turn voicemail off and put it on silent then just ignore anything you don't want to pick up (ie. everything). In comparison it's difficult to pretend you didn't get that email.

well you can if you say you rarely check it

 

[moochedit]

Emails are harder to ignore than the phone. With the phone you can always turn voicemail off and put it on silent then just ignore anything you don't want to pick up (ie. everything). In comparison it's difficult to pretend you didn't get that email.

My boss never checks his emails as he says he gets too many of them which can be useful sometimes as i can send him an email knowing he won't see it but its still there in writing.

 

[The39thStep]

Lockdown certainly caused a lot of parents to change their email addresses. A couple had addresses like hotsexychick@hotmail or sweetelaine69@yahoo

Haven’t had a reply from either of those email addresses

 

[moochedit]

Haven’t had a reply from either of those email addresses

Need .com or .co.uk on the end.

 

[Saul Goodman]

What if someone does not have a computer? How then will they access email? They would go to a public library.
It seems ridiculous to me to have something that you have to check at least once a day in case you have a message on it.

A landline is always on, and it is easy to check for messages.

I hear they're bringing out these things called smartphones. Apparently, they're going to do email and stuff.

 

[AverageJoe]

If you've got the phone numbers then set up a WhatsApp group

 

[MickiQ]

Two of my daughters have exchanged my roof and hearth for that of another man, neither of them have a landline telephone just mobiles (they have broadband obvs) TBH there are times when I wonder if it is still worth me keeping a landline phone, it's only the fact that mine and Mrs Q parents are not totally keen on mobiles that makes me retain one.

 

[Saul Goodman]

If you've got the phone numbers then set up a WhatsApp group

Is membership compulsory?

 

[kittyP]

my mum is well into whatsapp, and peppers many of her messages with glittery unicorns

My mum is always accidentally sending unicorns to people

 

[weltweit]

I've given up a landline, don't see the point now.

 

[moochedit]

If you've got the phone numbers then set up a WhatsApp group

This may shock you but some phone numbers aren't registered with whatapp in fact some phones can't even run whatsapp

 

[moochedit]

my mum is well into whatsapp, and peppers many of her messages with glittery unicorns

Mine likes the clappy hands

 

[moochedit]

Two of my daughters have exchanged my roof and hearth for that of another man, neither of them have a landline telephone just mobiles (they have broadband obvs) TBH there are times when I wonder if it is still worth me keeping a landline phone, it's only the fact that mine and Mrs Q parents are not totally keen on mobiles that makes me retain one.

Analogue landlines are stopping in (i think) 2025 anyway. After that its voip phones or mobiles. I think most people only have them because they come with the broadband line.

 

[PTK]

Analogue landlines are stopping in (i think) 20k25 anyway. After that its voip phones or mobiles. I think most people only have them because they come with the broadband l

 

[PTK]

Landlines are ending? Where did you see that?

 

[moochedit]

Landlines are ending? Where did you see that?

Your guide to the PSTN network switch-off

In 2027, public switched telephone network (PSTN) will switch off, so we're moving all our customers to a fully digital network. Find out more on BT Business.

business.bt.com

Internet revamp for the humble landline

The UK plans to make all landlines into internet-based connections over the next few years.

www.bbc.com

The great telephone switch-off

The traditional telephone network is being switched off in 2025. What does this mean for business owners?

www.itpro.co.uk

 

[Orang Utan]

Landlines are ending? Where did you see that?

i don’t think i know anyone who uses their landline when they have mobile. we’ve just got rid of ours cos only scammers and saleswankers call it

 

[Orang Utan]

landlines are as quaint as fax machines

 

[Thora]

We don’t really use our landline (my mum calls it sometimes) but annoyingly I don’t have good mobile reception at home.

 

[PTK]

i don’t think i know anyone who uses their landline when they have mobile. we’ve just got rid of ours cos only scammers and saleswankers call it

I use a landline telephone. I find it easier to use than a mobile telephone.

The decision to abolish the current Public Switched Telephone Network system is stupid. The current landline system continues to work if there is a power cut. The new system will not. The existing system is also utilised by systems such as traffic lights and railway signals. So, to switch to the voice-over-internet system will require that all these systems will have to be provided with battery backup. If a power cut lasted for more than twenty-four hours (and climate change makes this more likely) then people would be incommunicado.
It does not make sense to make one system of communication more vulnerable to failure

 

[Orang Utan]

I use a landline telephone. I find it easier to use than a mobile telephone.

The decision to abolish the current Public Switched Telephone Network system is stupid. The current landline system continues to work if there is a power cut. The new system will not. The existing system is also utilised by systems such as traffic lights and railway signals. So, to switch to the voice-over-internet system will require that all these systems will have to be provided with battery backup. If a power cut lasted for more than twenty-four hours (and climate change makes this more likely) then people would be incommunicado.
It does not make sense to make one system of communication more vulnerable to failure

it does if very few people are using it. to many of us, it just seems weird and retrograde to pay for a landline when one doesn’t need to

 

[Saul Goodman]

It does not make sense to make one system of communication more vulnerable to failure

It makes sense to ditch it completely. The Luddites wont miss it once they've been dragged into this century for a couple of weeks.

 

[spanglechick]

I hate phoning parents but it’s still best practice because it enables a 2-way conversation. Email is loads easier. I’ve almost never come across a student’s records without at least one email address on file - and this is a Lambeth state secondary, low income/EAL/homeless/refugee families and all that jazz. Parents change email addresses way less often than phone numbers too. If I need to evidence contact to show, eg. a pattern of intervention with an underachieving child, then email is king.
By the time kids get to secondary, our parents aren’t new at dealing with schools. I think if you have kids you’re likely to be a bit more motivating to check email (even if not every day) than you’d otherwise be.

Letters are the worst of all worlds, except for thing like permission letters for trips. Though actually, a Google form would probably do the job. But a letter through the post is incredibly rare and not used for day-to-day communication.

Texts or WhatsApp aren’t great. Some kind of functionality that means the school/teachers don’t need to use mobile phones to send messages through a transparent central comment system (like school email). It’s absolutely inappropriate for teachers to use their own mobile phones numbers for parent contact.

And really, surely whatsapp is only advantageous for group messaging, which isn’t what’s needed here.

I agree with killer b that these parents just haven’t supplied their emails. Some parents consider their time as an active parent more or less finished when their kids start sixth form.