Does

Social

Media

make you

Unsocial?

A case for Social Media

Rajesh Soundararajan rajesh@futureshift.sg

Does Social Media make you Unsocial?

As Strategy Director for Social Media Practice at Futureshift Consulting, I am asked this question

over and over again in my engagements and workshops - “Is Social Media is making nerds out of

humans and is it really that social?”. “If Facebook were making people not-social, how can a

business be social on social-media”?

Even after dabbling with multiple modes of market research, some of them paid-for - Focus

Group Discussions, Intercept Surveys and e-survey etc. - I was not satisfied with reach or the

quality of answers. I was looking for subjective cues and opinions and I could not get that.

So I decided to take this research head-on – where the rubber hits the road– On Facebook

Questions. The Question - “Does more Facebook mean less social or more social in today's

world?” This was an absolutely random audience, from over 500 million people across the globe;

a delight for any marketing professional. They are already participants in the social media and

needless to say they understand the medium to give a meaningful insight. In less than 72 hours,

I had a hundred people participating in this poll, and at least 16 of them gave some detailed

answers. Needless to say the audience further rated the answers again and that tells me a good

answer from a mediocre one, Crowd sourcing Research at its best. The findings -

Social is the new world order and technology, an inert enabler.

“Social" will have a fresh definition in the current context of new world and new dynamics.

Through this medium humans are virally spreading ideas and products, and the social media is

just a medium for

transmission of

thoughts, ideas and

feelings.

Hence there is no real

comparison to previous

social interactions to

what we are seeing now

and what we may see in

the future. To that

extent, the impact of

social media would not

be truly measurable in

comparison to the past.

In the longer term

however we may measure the impact in the next few years vis-a-vis the initial days.

Just as when writing was invented, people were worried about the ability to remember. When

telephone was invented, they were wondering why anyone would ever need to talk to someone

more than twenty miles away. Today, mobile telephony has given additional access sans time

and distance constraints and we wonder how human race ever lived without these. New types of

communications have come on and they are here to say, co-existing and evolving into newer

forms - texting, email, and instant messenger.

More Social

61%

Less Social

39%

Does Facebook make us more social or less

social in today's world?

A case for Facebook: Why it makes people more social.

For most introverts who hid themselves behind a computer or a book and didn't enjoy the social

dynamics, social networking just gave an additional medium of expression; for most extroverts

social media either supplemented their desire or turbo charged their already social world by

breaking boundaries of time and space.

Social media creates another sphere of social interaction that is local, yet global, an interaction

that is active and yet non-intrusive by allowing for more opportunities to be social. The onus is

placed on the individual to go out and be social, just as the case in the physical world. The status

update merely becomes a medium for quick expression of the quirky moments that they would

have any way shared with their group of friends. It is just that the new medium gives them a force

multiplier effect to share with hundreds of people and possibly multiply chance for new social

interactions.

Throughout history, it has been fairly easy to convince each successive generation of the

superiority (or exclusivity) of whatever culture one lives in. It would have been too difficult to

reach out and see alternatives. The biggest impact is that more people are being exposed to

even more points of view (POV) than ever before. What may be interesting though that it may be

worth investigating how social media interacts with other cultures that are person-person social

in general, say in the conservative world or a remote village. People in some of these

communities do a face-face interaction on a daily basis, much more than in the United States.

Facebook may for one amplify their social life even after they have physically leave their circle of

friends.

Now, with such a ubiquitous medium we have access to people and happenings around the

world and have interesting POV from a 13 year old – 85 year old. In effect, we are forced, for the

first time in human history to consider the POV of people who live on the other side of the world

as "valid" as ours. In effect, our neighbours POV now does not sound as bad and in fact, we start

appreciating it a lot more today. Hence in the long-term it may result in lesser conflicts as people

start recognizing and appreciating the alternate POVs and “different" people out there are neither

superior nor inferior and they are just different.

In the generation of broadband and internet people may stay inside more because they have the

comfortable, predictable periphery of the internet that insulates them from real life. On the other

hand, the ability to share pictures of social interactions such as parties and the fun people are

having may influence others to get out of their bubble and be more social, especially since you

can invite people en masse to social events. Thus it may in effect create more opportunity for

social interactions that go with one‟s own personality. There was one study that even apparently

showed that people tend to communicate with almost the same set of people they would have in

person in real life.

That said, we are spending less face time with friends and finding newer friends significantly

faster and wider through social networking online. While one may do some genealogy work to

find the roots and relatives, there are others are totally blown away by hundreds messages and

posts from friends and family all over the world after a Brief illness or on their special moments.

In some cases, it has even removed the awkward feeling to resume communication with long lost

friends. In a way it aids the effort to become more socially active and to develop a healthy social

circle once again after going out of touch. Moreover, it makes convenient to plan or catch up

without the need for chasing one another through phone calls or emails.

And the case against– Why social media make people less social!

In the short term, this rapid socialization is creating more conflicts in societies, especially

conservative societies. While children adopt this medium with a frenzy, their parents panic and

react negatively to the prospect that their children might be influenced through lifestyles and

cultures; Familial, social, cultural and religious institutions are facing more challenges to the

onslaught of rapid change (decline) in moral values and unable to maintain or control the societal

fabric. That brings about controls and restrictions that are being imposed that may have a

counter-intuitive effect on the actions.

This new medium heightens up the possibility of having fabricated avatars that are different from

the real person. While people have always been crafting, positioning and selling themselves for

as long as mankind existed, nothing in the past allowed the possibility for such mass

misrepresentation. By projecting the part

of one‟s self that they want their friends to

see and believe (with no real way of

checking it) one can have endless

opportunities to create multiple

personalities. In real life, the physical

limitations of doing things with people, the

sensory touching- seeing- talk create

arguably a higher level of trust and shared

emotions.

Further, the medium builds an air of

familiarity with the on-line persona of a

person that when we are faced with real

personal interaction, they are either over-

friendly or just stuck because this is not

the person that they knew. That creates

further conflict and dissonance with the

multiple personalities – online and offline

persona.

Others believe that a lot more information is being shared with a lot less interaction. They see

face to face meetings as interactions while technology driven exchanges like a „posting on your

wall‟ are pure information exchanges and hence falsely give the sense of more social.

For now, the verdict is 6:4 in favour of social media. Cultural anthropologists will no doubt study

this phenomenon past and share the findings sometime in the future.

Till then happy tweeting!

A Crowd sourced Research on Facebook – Does Facebook mean more social or less social?

Figure 1Crowd Sourcing Research