Staying Connected

Tom and Jess talk about e-mail, social networking sites and time on the computer.

Tom: Jess, usually when I see you, you're sitting at the computer checking your e-mail. How many times a day do you check it?

Jess: I honestly don't count, but many, many times. Definitely more than twenty times a day. It's not really necessary. It's not like I have millions of e-mails coming into my account every day, but I'm very impatient and I hate waiting for responses or waiting for something that I'm expecting so I'll check my e-mail so that I can receive it as soon as it's sent. How about you? Do you check your e-mails often?

Tom: I suppose I check once a day, and if I have any mail, it will be one or two weeks before I reply to it. I'm really bad at keeping in touch. I've got accounts at facebook and my space and hi5, all these social networking sites, but I almost never log on and people .... I got a message the other day, a friend telling me, I'm a boring facebooker. It's official because I haven't updated my profile in so long.

Jess: Why don't you? Is it that you haven't got enough time?

Tom: I have got so much free time. I think it's just because I'm very lazy. I take photos. I meet people. I do things. I just don't feel the need to tell everyone about it at the end of the day. My family have kind of gotten used to it now. They know that I'll get in contact they'll likely to see me in the next few months, or I'll get in contact if there's a birthday or a baby, but apart from that, I really don't keep in touch very well.

Jess: Apart from e-mail, neither do I. I did join Facebook a couple of years ago when all of my friends did and everyone was sending me links to join, and I created my profile, but to be honest, it's too much for me to have more than one thing to check that many times a day, so usually I stick to e-mail for communication. Yes, I do check it a lot, but I think if I started checking Facebook as regularly, I wouldn't have time to do the things I need to every day.

Listen to the audio of this conversation here: http://www.elllo.org/english/0951/T973-Tom-Connecting.htm