Is social media changing our lifestyles?
Ask many people today where they were before they had a mobile phone, Internet access and social media and we are sure many replies would be in the line of ‘I can’t even remember life without these things as part of it’. It’s very true, mobile, Internet accessing social portals is a term many of us going about our everyday lives with… Our communications and actions are now, for many, evolving round emailing, texting, updating, googling and calling / Skyping.
Just the other day I arranged a re-union party between old business colleagues who had not seen each other for over ten years, but the meeting though greatly enjoyed by all, was made less dramatic cause we all followed each other on Facebook. It wasn’t a case of us all thinking to ourselves or saying ‘you’ve really changed in appearance or aged with less or greyer hair’, it was simply that we’d tracked each others progress on Facebook so all knew exactly what we looked like. I put it to everyone in fact that the likes of Facebook had contributed to us not having met up sooner, we think that viewing updates of each other is as good as meeting up to talk about what’s happening in our lives. Since meeting up we have all agreed that a get together every so often far betters simply seeing each other ‘virtually’ in each others timelines!
So, has and is social media changing the way we live our lives? We asked varied people in our office, friends and families and the following are some of the replies we received:
- “Certainly is making communications between families easier. You now simply use Facebook to see what your friends and family are up to with many accompanying updates with photographs. This makes for less phones calls between us and when we do talk we have to work harder to think of recent topics to discuss as we usually say ‘yes I know, I saw you’d uploaded photos of that on Facebook’”.
- “The biggest change is the children. They are all on it and talking to each other and mixed with online gaming consoles such as XBox, they simply do not have to leave their bedrooms to entertain their days and play with their friends. As parents, it’s a harder job to get them active and out and about more”.
- “It means you have to be more careful. You are no longer untraceable. You can come back in from a night out with friends and the girlfriend can see everything that happened thanks to updates and photos on timelines”.
- “We understand social media and its benefits, but it shouldn’t play such a big part of people’s lives. Everybody is on their mobile phones these days and getting conversation going from some people is so difficult. You sit on the bus these days and everyone has their head stuck in their phones seeing what their friends are up to on Facebook and similar”.
- “It has brought the business world closer, made the challenge of finding people and even employing the right people so much more easier. For business it is a must”.
- “I grew up with Facebook and now I couldn’t imagine living without my account. When you get used to how it all works, you can simply share with those you want to your private updates and keep out people you don’t want seeing your stuff, like parents and other family”.
- “Too busy to worry about who’s doing what on Facebook. I go out and live my life with active people, we all know what we are doing cause we regulary see each other at events”.
- “I am intrigued to create my Facebook account cause everyone I know is on it and so many of my contacts have found long lost friends using it”.
- “I think it is more a younger person activity, a busy nine to five lifestyle doesn’t allow us time to spend taking time to take photos and sticking them on Facebook”.
- “Three bedroom house, father, mother and two children and do you know, I counted 18 Internet accessing devices in our household! This must mean its the sign of the times. We can’t stop our kids from using the internet and the likes of Facebook for when we were young we wanted to use the latest gadgets / trends… I was always glued to my Walkman”.
- “Social media is a big part of our business and we sell products on Facebook and EBay if thatselling site is included within social media. It has changed the way we operate as a business and we need to remain active and social on Facebook to improve our sales – Before it was spending time and money on SEO to improve our Google ranking”.
- “It’s all over television, especially Saturday night family shows where they are asking people to Tweet them etc. From my understanding, it allows us to get closer to our favourite shows and brands”.
- “It is addictive. I would spend at least an hour each evening on Facebook – it just pulls me in”.
- “It’s very good for complaining to the big brands who simply can not hide behind complaint departments based in India etc. I have complained on Twitter and got a near enough immediate reply and exchange for my product”.
- “All the music stars are on there and I feel I am closer to them every time I Tweet them. It’s a craze to get any of the big names to follow you, some of my friends are followed by members of One Direction”.
- “Would rather sit down and read a good book. Please don’t annoy me by mentioning Facebook”.
– See more at: https://marketme.co.uk/is-social-media-changing-our-lifestyles/#sthash.Px26fxKh.dpuf