Leanne Roed, 17, chats with friend through an instant messaging program. Instant messaging, or IM, has taken the teen world by storm in the last few years and now it seems everyone is doing it.

If ICQ will you Yahoo me back?

Instant messaging, or IM, has taken the teen world by storm in the last few years and now it seems everyone is doing it.

If you don't know ICQ stands for "I seek you," you may be one of those dinosaurs still living in the dark ages of e-mail.

Unlike e-mail, IM is, well, instant.

Listen to a few favourite downloaded tunes, while working on that geography homework, and carry on keyboard conversations with half a dozen close friends at the same time.

The really plugged-in will have a phone attached to one ear at the same time. "Sometimes with the same person, sometimes not," says Aaron Rosenberg, although the 17-year-old student says IM is really a good alternative to phone calls.

Like many teenagers, he'll keep ICQ running in a corner of his computer while working on other things.

'Multi-tasker'

Laura Pethrick, also 17, insists it doesn't waste time but rather saves it by letting her communicate with more than one friend and do other things.

"It's like carrying on a bunch of little conversations at once, so it's great if you're a multi-tasker like me," she says.

Of course, people used computers to chat long before IM hit the scene.

But the more personal IM has broad appeal and is spreading beyond desktops to hand-held devices and cellphones.

Unlike e-mail, with IM you know whether the person you want to contact is online or not. The application can be kept running in a corner of your screen and you'll be notified if someone wants to chat.

To get started, it's necessary to pick one of many available chat clients, download and install it and start compiling a list of friends or contacts who are granted access. Also unlike e-mail, there is no record of messages sent or received.

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