According to a new survey by Nielsen, the average person spent five hours and third-five minutes on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.
Given the growth of such as Facebook and Twitter, it’s hardly surprised that we’re spending about 11 minutes/day on social media sites. In fact, that seems low but it does take into account people who, heaven forbid, spend no time using social media.
As the use of social media increases, an interesting question is what are people not going to be doing? Maybe it’s television, although online video viewership is also on the rise. It could be newspapers but online readerships seems to be on the rise. Perhaps it’s book but the rise of eReaders such as the Kindle seem to be giving reading a shot in the arm.
It could be physical activity. According to a recent Canadian Health Measures survey, Canadians are now fatter and less physically fit – something that’s probably true for many Western countries.
The rise of social media could also impact how much time we spend with friends and family. Why socialize in person when you can socialize digitally from the comfort of your couch? Then again, it has been suggested that social media helps people expand their circle of friends. And from what I can tell about the digitally-engaged in Toronto, they socialize in person all the time.
So, what loses if social media wins? Any thoughts?
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we simply process more information in a day than our parents did in a month
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I think people tend to half do many things at the same time, so I find myself with FB on in the background of my screen, TV on and talking to friends on MSN or something, so no one thing gets 100% of my attention.
Based on the last two comments, then what we lose is the amount of attention given to the information we process. It doesn't matter if its for work or for recreative pourposes. The quantity of our attention decreases. This has a subsequent impact: If we reduce the amount of quantity of attention, we will decrease the quality also. Then there is simple question to be asked… Which information is worth the time to process and which not?…
I personally find myself being slowly trained to be less capable of concentrating on a single thing for a long period of time. Even when I am trying to write a document at work, I find myself “switching” rapidly to check Outlook or my IM every few minutes. This is a pattern of behavior that has been trained based on how Outlook functions, by checking email every 10-15 minutes. A new email must be responded to or read right away, of course, and this trains our brains to “fragment” our attention.
The antidote? For me, it’s meditation. Practicing single-pointed awareness for 10 to 20 minutes at a time is just the beginning, but undertaken as daily practice, I think it can be quite balancing to the always-on mentality of the modern world.
Love the site.