In a discussion at work recently, a colleague referred to our constant connectivity as “a disease”. Instead of enjoying the world and soaking it all in, she argued that we are busy photographing it, drafting tweets about it, and reviewing the experience for our networks to see. We’re eternally searching for an opportunity to tweet, devastated when we miss a photo op and desperate for witty captions and one-liners to share online. My colleague’s argument was that we’re so hung up on our devices that we’ve lost our zest for life.
Well, that’s a pretty horrifying thought, isn’t it?
The more I dwelt on it, the more I could see the spread of this disease. On the walk to work, I noted endless commuters all plugged into their iWhatevers, completely oblivious to what was happening around them. A stunning morning in Hyde Park, with no one appreciating it.
I, too, have fallen victim to this disease. While I’d like to think I’m more connected with the “real” world than with my phone, one week without my smartphone was all I needed to show how much I rely on it. When my smartphone died in January, I suffered FOMO (Fear of Missing Out to the uninitiated) on an unprecedented scale. I endured a mourning process as acute as if a real, living being had died. Weird, right? Before my beloved Blackberry (RIP) passed on, I’d text whilst driving, tweet whilst on a date, interrupt one call to take another… and not even realize how obsessively I would check my phone.
Technology that we’re at one with and that promotes social balance and harmony wouldn’t require such obsessive checking behaviour, would it? Smartphones have been around for a while now and social networks have been around for even longer, however I think that as humans, we’re still feeling our way around this technology. The fact that so many of us willingly text and drive (putting our own and others’ lives at risk) shows that people are shaping their lives around the technology and social “connections”, rather than the other way around. In fact, a recent study performed in Germany found that Facebook and Twitter were more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol.
Not only is this technology shaping how we lead our lives, but it has massive effects for the business end of social networks. A key problem that plagues social networks such as Facebook is how to generate revenue from their mobile platforms. As we’re increasingly heading to our mobiles rather than computers to check in on our lives, this poses yet another challenge for developers and advertisers.
I think it is important to remember that while we are still learning how to best integrate social media and new technologies into our lives, brands and companies are still figuring out how to best integrate it into their marketing strategies. As we’re developing and evolving our uses of new technologies, it is important that brands try to grow with us, instead of trying to dictate our use of media. Rather than playing on FOMO and constantly bombarding us with messages, brands should focus on increasing the quality of interactions with consumers.
FOMO is a very real, very relevant phenomenon that is permeating our social relationships. It took me a week of being phoneless to overcome my fear of missing out. The question is, will people ever be comfortable with switching off, rather than clinging to the fear that they’re missing out on something better?
Madeline Arnold
Social Executive
Mindshare (Sydney)
Madeline works for Mindshare in the social team and is interested in all things social media, however since a week sans smartphone, you won’t find her nose in her phone quite as often as before. You can find her tweeting about all manner of things at @madelineparnold.