To be fair, I should put the word “permanent” in quotes, because your email address(es) are only as permanent as you want them to be.
If you own your own domain, and shouldn’t you?, your email address can last for decades. No one can take it away. Even email addresses with long-standing, relatively stable email providers can be quasi-permanent. I know people who have had the same Yahoo email address for 20+ years, despite the various owners of Yahoo over the years. Gmail, Outlook, and even AOL have had some seriously long runs.
But there’s something more here than just simply having the same email address, although that’s something few messaging and communication platforms can offer.
Email is the only internet-based communication identity that is equivalent to the power of the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, and the first telephone numbers were created in the years that followed.
Eventually, a telephone number become your business or home’s “identity”. By the time email was invented in 1971, nearly every home and business had a telephone number. Since the era of mobile (cellular) phones, the phone number has increasingly become connected to the individual, not the place.
Many businesses and government agencies still ask for “home phone” and “mobile phone”, but 90% of people (in America anyway) don’t maintain a home phone anymore. And if the first field that pops up is “home phone”, many people just put their mobile number and ignore the remaining phone fields.
Email is the same in that respect. Your email address doesn’t connote a place, or really even a service.
When you give someone your email address, you don’t ask them “Do you have email?”. Same with the phone. You don’t say “Do you use the phone system?”.
You can give an email address to anyone on the planet and never ask that question, except in the most remote tribal areas of the world. As of this writing in December 2025, Email is Not Dead reports that there are 4.371 billion email users. Despite the planet supposedly having 7 billion people, and you now thinking, “Hey, wait a minute, that means 2.7 billion people don’t have email yet!”, I can promise you that if you’re reading this post, you’ll never meet or need to email any of those 2.7 billion people. (Random aside: I think the population numbers are inflated anyway).
You also don’t go asking people, “Do you use Gmail?” or “Do you use Outlook?”.
You simply give them your email address. “Here’s my email”, you say confidently knowing that they’ll be able to reach you. You don’t even have to say “my email address” as almost everyone drops the word “address” in casual conversation and writing.
In fact, an email address is so ubiquitous that you needn’t even preface it with a caption. Sure, sometimes you see decals on businesses, or on business cards, or on letterhead, and they’ll still use the pre-Y2K nomenclature of “Email: questions@justuseemail.com” and “Phone: +1 (123) 456-7890”. But it’s becoming quite rare.
But if I give you @justuseemail, you have to ask me “What is this? Instagram? Twitter/X? Something else?”.
So email has the superpower of being the only modern communication tool that can be simply handed out and even if someone doesn’t use it for years, you’ll still get the email no matter what has been going on with Silicon Valley’s social media shenanigans.
You could argue that phone does as well (and it does), but we’re talking all things internet here. And you could argue that the URL system of the World Wide Web also works this way, but I’d argue that a website is more of a storage repository of data (even a reactive one like a social media website) than a formal communication method.
Elon has introduced DMs (Direct Messages) into X as part of making it a more robust communication platform (and there’s already a lot there), but again, to use it, both you and the other party must use X.
So once again, just use email. So simple, so ubiquitous, and capable of 7 other superpowers (to date).
Just Use Email 