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February 9, 2008

10:01 pm | 3 recommendations | 7 comments

Does Social Media Make You Less Social

| posted by Jimmy Gardner

Just as I was thinking that this Social Media phenomena was actually making me more social, along came this post by Bill Cammack over on FastCompany's new website, which I am liking a lot .. but a post is forthcoming on that soon.
Bill was interviewed by Jonny Goldstein
on his Par-tay and his response to Jonny's question as to whether or
not he thought social media made people more social was it does not.
Bill said :

My point was that I became less social instead of more social because
of the fact that my friends are always at my fingertips. For the sake
of this post, I'm defining "social" as actually going somewhere to hang
out with friends of mine, IRL.

Jonny actually thinks that it can lead to more actual social
interaction and I agree with him. Seeing as I met Jonny through a
mutual twitter friend and have since started watching his show
regularly and seen him in actual person on several occasions it only
leads to reason. Had I not been using these new social media tools, I
would have never had the pleasure of not only meeting him, but a whole
slew of other great people in the local DC area here.

Bill makes some interesting points

There's no reason for me to physically go ANYWHERE unless physically
interacting with that person is the reason I'm going. You can't go
snowboarding together unless you actually go snowboarding. Other than
that, the current state of communications enables you to be AS in-touch
with someone as you want to be ...

I think that more often, social media allows us to FEIGN getting together, which is actually *less* social than more so.

but i tend to disagree with most of them, especially that last one
there. I think that once you find your niche in these social tools,
like Twitter, it leads to some really interesting real life social
interactions. The fact that I have some background on the people I
have found really makes the real life meeting that much easier and more
comfortable. Meeting people "cold" is not easy, but when you have that
online rapport already established it helps the transition. Then once
you have a base of these "online"/"offline" friends the tentacles
spread out from there and you meet the friend of one of your friends
and so on. Here is an irony for you, now when I meet these peripheral
friends, if you will, I go online later and start following them, and
the cycle starts again.

In my opinion, my foray into social media has led to some great
contacts, good friends, and thet start of a burgeoning tech culture
here in the DC area.

So what do you all think, does social media make you more social ?

Tags: Innovation, Technology, social media, twitter
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Comments | 7

February 21, 2008 at 3:28pm

Nathan Minetti

I think used in the right way social networking can make you more social. I find it works better for connecting with old friends then actually making new contacts. I still find it easier to keep communication with a large group of people without a large time constraint. In this busy world most people dont have time to personally see everyone they know. People must remember though that a physical interaction with people is still needed and a post on someones wall is not the same as a visit.

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February 19, 2008 at 1:43am

Julia Scott

I assume that old-bags (such as myself, being at the tail-end of gen X) rarely socialise IRL with our social media 'friends', while young things (gen Y's) are more likely to extend their OL networks into RL.

Or am I being ageist!?...

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February 18, 2008 at 2:25am

Shel Horowitz

Why I have seen social media make *some* people more social, I've also seen the opposite. Social media allows people from widely disparate geography but sharing common interests to build relationships.

I have seen this wonderful phenomenon at conferences: Walk over to someone, squint at the name tag of this person you never met, and then give a big hog because s/he is an old friend online. And so much of the small-talk introduction stuff is already under the bridge that you actually can go pretty deep when you finally do meet some of these people.

_____
Shel Horowitz, copywriter and award-winning author of five marketing books Blogging on the intersections of ethics, marketing, media, sustainability, and politics: http://www.principledprofit.com/good-business-blog/

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February 17, 2008 at 9:58pm

Isaac Pigott

True, Marc -- but I could also say that water can negatively impact a person's ability to breathe. It's all in the amount of social media used, and how it is ingested and processed.

As for leaning too much on tech for communications, there are many who mistake productivity with personal effectiveness. Let's not discount the notion that an incoming generation may place greater weight on the forms we might dismiss as more impersonal.

That said -- I wouldn't have hired your associate candidate either.

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February 17, 2008 at 1:26pm

Johan Kjörk

would this question make sense to anyone below 16 years of age? ;-)

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February 14, 2008 at 3:10pm

Marc Hausman

I agree 100 percent that social media technologies can negatively impact a person's ability to interact with individuals in a business environment.

For instance, I work for a public relations consultancy and we are often challenged to find associate-level candidates who have people skills.

One person I interviewed actually said they prefer to not deal directly with people, rather communicating via instant messaging, Email and social networks. I had to remind the person that PR still stands for "public relations."

http://www.strategicguy.blogspot.com/

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February 13, 2008 at 7:40pm

Saabira Chaudhuri

Enjoyed your post Jimmy. I think the catch here is that there are different types of people – for the more tech savvy, or perhaps just those whose lives are largely structured around their Internet activity online social networks expand not only their list of contacts, but also increases their interaction with others – both online and offline.

For others, social networks are a convenient way to keep up with what's going on in a contact's life, but these often lend themselves more to voyeurism, or to perfunctory messages or wishes (for things like birthdays) than to an actual increase in interaction that goes beyond a simple whatsup?

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