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Influencers Invited Sales Blog

Socially Unsocial

Social Media is creates Silos

Socially Unsocial: If you are like most people, you probably can’t remember the last time you un-plug from the information overload device you call a smartphone, or the last time you turned it off and enjoyed the solitude of nature. It has been said that 96% of people who own a smartphone keep it within four feet of them at all times and there are 6 billion people who own a cellphone according to the world census report of 2013. Time Magazine published an article about a U.N. study which found that more people have cell phones than toilets. Out of the world’s estimated 7 billion people, 6 billion have access to mobile phones and only 4.5 billion have access to working toilets.

Social Media is marketed as a social activity, however when you breakdown social media in today’s society it actually makes people not so sociable to the people in their immediate vicinity. Consumers and business people start to ignore the environment around them and don’t communicate with the people in front of them while they are on their phone checking for Facebook updates, receiving text, checking email, etc. Social Media and cellphones have been distracting to businesses and consumers for so long, that is becomes difficult for them to physically interact with people in the same room.

In today’s world, it is becoming increasingly difficult for young people to look someone in the eye when they are having a conversation. Society is becoming so dependent on the instant information that is constantly being pushed to us that it is hard for young kids to be creative and find something to do without the internet.The very bases of communication and the simple enjoyment of an in depth conversation is becoming a thing of the past. Look across the room, look around you in a restaurant, how many people are on their cellphone? In today’s fast paced information pushing society, when 4 people sit down at a booth in a restaurant, three of them will take out their cellphone and start communicating with someone who isn’t at the table.

The enjoyment of receiving and reading a hand written letter from a loved one is a thing of the past. Along with leaving a note on someone’s door because you stopped by when they were out. What has taken the place of these simple gestures is an unexplainable obsession with being connected to everybody all the time. What has happened in the civilian world of communication has hindered and excelled the society that we live in today. This same scenario has also affected the way people create relationships in the world of sales.

Digital communication has helped advance society and has pushed today’s business culture to respond more quickly to transactions, sales and prospecting because of it. It has also hindered our youth due to the mass amounts of communication that streams through the hand held devices. This has become a positive movement for businesses & the baby boomers, but it is also a negative movement for the younger generation. Without the advancement of the smartphone, social media would not be as popular. This is just one form of instant communication that becomes a parallel to the instant gratification that American society looks for.

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