February 01, 2011
with arauser
This post has 7 Comments, add yours! Tagged under: Marketing Observations
This week someone asked me whether I thought people are losing human connection due to the fact that people are so hooked on their smartphones.
With the access to messaging services, chat, and social networks via mobile phones, people are more connected and updated about each others’ lives than ever before. If you think about how communication, especially across distances, was handled 10 years ago in comparison with today, a lot has changed significantly.
Today we get instant updates about our friends and families and we’re virtually closer to one another. This marks a change in the way we communicate for sure, but not necessarily for the worse.
Users are spending up to 80 minutes a day using mobile applications and with the amount of mobile apps available, there is also a huge amount of content to consume. Mobile devices become more and more the center of media consumption and interaction.
As users become more reliant on apps for their different day-to-day and entertainment needs, the way we use mobiles to connect is changing too. Whether people are using them to watch videos, stream music, surf the web, or read newspapers, they know that they have access to all different types of content out there with a touch of a button. So perhaps mobile usage is helping people engage, but on a different wave length.
How do you think that the way we connect and interact today is affecting our human side?
I believe that way we "connect" is in fact disconnecting us from the real world as we are spending more time in the virtual world.
We spend more time telling the rest of the world how much fun we are having by tweeting, updating our status, or pointing out our coordinates instead of actually enjoying the time with those in front of us.
The human connection is so often missed out on by being dependent almost too much on the apps that are being fed to us on a daily basis by technology companies.
We now have apps for almost everything that the simple norm of necessity being the mother of invention seems to have lost its very meaning. You want to have a party, there's an app for that, no idea what to cook and have just 3 ingredients at home- there's an app for that, stuck somewhere in dubai and wondering if anyone else is around you to hang out with, just look around you via an app. There's an app for almost everything.
So there are a lot of pros to apps with them allowing us to keep in touch with family and friends easily, to manage time better, to do more with little. It allows us to be more efficient, however it does call for a cost-benefit analysis. I guess there is always an opportunity cost involved with everything in life and this particular case is no different.
I like your pros and cons Aarti, you're right.. there is definitely an opportunity cost to apps and mobiles.
Yes, there is many opportunity for both development and marketing.
hollo i am interested for you thanks keep incuth with my email sharqawi.saber@yahoo.com
many people buy smartphones but many dont use them to their full potential. that is always a very big problem.
i'm sorry, but I can't read this long-hand. How I long for the days when we used to lol and lmfao rotg. now, we are but a shadow of our former selves, utilizing punctuation and speaking with verbs, nouns and adjectives. it is very confusing. ya haram.
Good morning...