Nearly half of us suffer from email guilt and ten percent believe that our personal relationships are suffering because of electronic mail, according to two different surveys.
The humble email is taking in a battering in the welter of pre-Christmas surveys being conducted by companies desperate to get their name up in lights ahead of the festive season.
Although we generally have a rule that no survey of under two thousand people will make it onto our news pages, if you combine surveys done by GMX (1700) and Office Angels (1200) then you are pretty much there.
Guilty secret
GMX (who, wait for it, runs a webmail service) says that 41 per cent of people suffer from guilt when they don't reply to emails promptly enough, with one in three telling them that they are overwhelmed by the amount of emails that they get.
Good news for men is that it is the fairer sex that are more prone to email embarrassment.
Eva Heil, Managing Director, GMX, said, "Our research shows that the pressure to keep on top of personal email is a major cause for concern for a great many Britons, who place a high importance on keeping in touch with friends and family."
Traumatised
Office Angels went to the trouble of surveying 1200 people, and their suggestions to help those 10 per cent traumatised by the damage that email is doing to personal relationships is a 'facemail' day.
David Clubb, managing director of Office Angels said: "A facemail day is great excuse for employees to set up meetings with some of those clients they may not have caught up with for a while or for them to demonstrate their excellent customer service skills.
"Email undoubtedly has benefits, but can often be over relied upon. Office Angels is going back to basics and communicating the old fashioned way and we'd encourage your office to do the same."
Nonsense
TechRadar feels at liberty to point out that we go out of our way to avoid actually meeting the people we email and we certainly won't be instituting a 'facemail' day.
Also, if we could uncoin the phrase 'facemail' and use the word 'conversation' which has been perfectly acceptable for many years then that would be just spiffy.
We can reiterate that in person if you are too embarrassed to reply or feel that our personal relationship is at risk.
