Tom McCool is a parent I interviewed for Totally Wired. He also happens to be the executive director of marketing and communications at Ivy Tech Community College in Lafayette, Indiana. Tom emailed to tell me:

I've recently received the results of a media preference survey of our students. Because of dual enrollment agreements with local high schools, a significant number of teens participated in the survey. 97 16-20 year olds participated. (Total respondents 297).

In light of all I've been reading about the rise of mobile marketing and how teens communicate, the responses from the teens validate that they are texting and IMing each other - a lot. However, they don't want the college, and even more specifically, their advisors and professors, to communicate with them via texting or IMing.

68.3% said they IM and 69.8% said they text someone at least weekly. 55.7% said they have over 20 people on their IM list.

But when asked, "How much to you like or dislike these ways of contacting you?" the responses were very surprising.

65% expressed dislike of contact by phone, 54.2% disliked cell phone contact, 59.7% disliked text contact, and 55.6% disliked IM contact. 44.3% expressed a STRONG dislike of text contact, and 55.6% expressed a STRONG dislike of IM contact.

When asked how they prefer to communicate with advisors or professors, only 1% preferred IM with advisors, and 2.1% preferred IM with professors. Face to face communication with advisors was overwhelmingly preferred (79.4%).

When asked how they prefer that the college communicate with them, 70.2% preferred some form of e-mail.

When asked how they prefer to communicate with fellow students, 55.7% preferred face to face meetings. E-mail was the highest scoring online communication at 20.6%, followed by IM (8.2%), chat room (5.2%) and texting (2.1%).

These results tell me that teens want to communicate with their friends via IM and texting, but they don't want the college interfering in what they view as their personal life. This seems to totally counter what I've been reading about mobile marketing, and may cause concern for anyone looking into this form of marketing.

It's funny, Tom's email made me think about the teens I'm working with on the Ypulse podcast. I communicate with them by email -- I know they won't read it right away, but I feel like it's less of an invasion of their "digital space" as an adult. Just as you can contact teens via their MySpace, it feels weird to them to hear from adults that way. I still think parents can text and even IM with their teens without as much weirdness, but for other adults -- teachers, employers, etc. it appears to cross a line. What do you think?