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Overwhelmed and overcommitted: two words that definitely don’t describe how the above image makes you feel. Two words that do describe how technology and instantaneous communication is making our society feel.
Sharing, connecting, collaborating and creating is possible every second of the day. The social web is revolutionizing how we work and live, and how society functions.
Social media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the web.
80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices. People update anytime, anywhere.
There are over 200,000,000 blogs. 54% of bloggers post content or tweet daily. That’s 104,000,000 new pieces of information every day.
If Facebook were a country, it’d be the world’s 4th largest.
More than 1.5 million pieces of content are shared on Facebook every day.
And this is only the beginning…
Our values are changing. Our expectations are growing. Our output is increasing. Our free-time is decreasing. Our people are becoming obese.
The use of drugs like xanax to decrease anxiety and adderall to sustain alertness and focus grows rapidly each year.
We are becoming a society of overwhelmed and overcommitted, caught in a vicious cycle of go, do, more, faster, now… don’t stop pushing, you don’t need sleep, i will be better than you.
But at what expense?
We are becoming a society in which we text while driving, use cell phones at the dinner table, check our inboxes more than a dozen times…in one hour. Some of us have more than twenty online accounts, subscribe to over 200 blogs, and we use text, IM and Facebook as a means to avoid focused and one-to-one communication.
New tools and companies are introduced daily, designed to manage and filter through the noise, and recommend best practices for use.
What does this mean to society? What does this mean to the generations that will follow? Are there ramifications to our overly-connected and instantaneous lives? Can we live better with less?
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Comments
09.10.09
I really think the amount of time youngsters are spending on social networking sites is ridiculous! They have gone to the extent of turning to Facebook for help when they were stuck in a ditch, instead of using their cell phones to call the police!
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09.10.09
The fun comment - "Social media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the web." - say it isn't so!
The serious comment - "If Facebook were a country, it’d be the world’s 4th largest." - this made me think of John Lennon and his song 'Imagine'. I wish he were still alive to witness the Internet and social media.
09.10.09
Interesting post, I just wrote about feeling stressed with so much "new" too. The thing that I think is really changing is that people are going to have to now make time to disconnect, which is a habit we're not used to.
09.10.09
Social media has overtaken porn!?!? That is totally f'ed up.
09.10.09
Technology burnout is a recent addition to counselors lexicons and it's rapidly gaining in it's popularity. In truth I would be kind of stoked if 2012 did in fact change the polarity of the globe, it wouldn't take us long to get things back up and running but for awhile people would have to look around them, meet their neighbors, read a book... imagine a global tech shutdown!
09.10.09
When I went to the ER last year, after numerous tests and nothing showing up, the doctor concluded that I was having an anxiety attack. It made sense at the time, as I was diagnosed with a panic disorder years earlier (though this wasn't the case here). I remember this ER doctor sitting down and talking to me, telling me that they see this all the time, particularly with those of a younger generation.
He told me that means of communication is at an all-time high -- between blogs, online news, phones, Twitter, Facebook, IM, email -- we're constantly connected. As such, he relayed, our brains have a hard time turning off, which means we have a harder time relaxing, which is necessary for our minds and bodies if we don't want to burn out. With heightened awareness, there's the chance of increased anxiety -- feeling out of control in a world where there is so much going on and the need to be in tune all the time.
Looking back on it, I'm fascinated by the fact that even those in the medical profession are seeing this effect -- both physically and mentally. What does this mean for our or future generations? Will we as a society burn out? Or will we thrive? I think we'll adapt, as usual, as we have been doing, but I think there's also a point where it becomes too much, too overwhelming. Even computers have to go offline for awhile.
Interesting post, Amber! Looking forward to seeing where we're headed.
09.10.09
When I went to the ER last year, after numerous tests and nothing showing up, the doctor concluded that I was having an anxiety attack. It made sense at the time, as I was diagnosed with a panic disorder years earlier (though this wasn't the case here). I remember this ER doctor sitting down and talking to me, telling me that they see this all the time, particularly with those of a younger generation.
He told me that means of communication is at an all-time high -- between blogs, online news, phones, Twitter, Facebook, IM, email -- we're constantly connected. As such, he relayed, our brains have a hard time turning off, which means we have a harder time relaxing, which is necessary for our minds and bodies if we don't want to burn out. With heightened awareness, there's the chance of increased anxiety -- feeling out of control in a world where there is so much going on and the need to be in tune all the time.
Looking back on it, I'm fascinated by the fact that even those in the medical profession are seeing this effect -- both physically and mentally. What does this mean for our or future generations? Will we as a society burn out? Or will we thrive? I think we'll adapt, as usual, as we have been doing, but I think there's also a point where it becomes too much, too overwhelming. Even computers have to go offline for awhile.
Interesting post, Amber! Looking forward to seeing where we're headed.
09.10.09
You sound stressed, like you're going to burst. Take it easy :-) No need to get too excited :-)
I would say that while there is a lot of information, the statistics don't tell the whole truth. There may be 200,000,000 blogs out there, but how many are really updated? How many are just graveyards? How many actually have content you want to read? How much of the content do you really need?
The point here is that no one needs to spend all their time glued to a screen and a keyboard. We just choose to. Instead of listening to new age gurus that have strategies on how to cut back, and instead of buying software to make us cut back, let's just work on it by ourselves because after all we do have free will, and we should exercise it. You shouldn't let addiction control your life (food, drugs, technology, etc)
09.11.09
Very interesting and you described exactly the way we all feel. I just learned that if YouTube were a country, it would rank 3rd after China and India. They have so many users and 20 hours of video material is added every minute. What when internet crashes, apocalyps..
09.11.09
Thanks all for your comments!
@Susan - wow! Thanks for sharing your story! Time and time again, my friends express similar stories like yours. It saddens me that this is what is happening to our society. How do we change this? How do we help our generations and those to come to be able to relax, enjoy life and do great work, without feeling overwhelmed too?
@ dr. Pepper - thanks for the concern! This post was actually much less about me and much more about my observations.
09.11.09
Interesting post Amber; I am an IT professional (So I say...lol) and I routinely at home monitor several social websites just to get to know more about them, and at work, I monitor a couple additional social sites for business/personal reasons, as well as a few others just to monitor and evaluate.
Yes, it can become very consuming and I will admit to being overwhelmed at times, although I cannot confess to having more than 6 email accounts, far short of the 20 you offer up..... I must be slacking.....lol But I can say I have consolidated my RSS reader feeds down to using ONE program (Google Reader) so I don't have to play with desktop apps that may/may not be approved. Part of the "overwhwelming" may have to do with trying to test everything so you can have something intelligent to say about it; and there is a solution to all of that; you just need to find a single or maybe a second backup program to monitor all the things you want to follow.
I really would recommend Google Reader; it is the choice feed updater for Feed Demon and NetNewsWire and you can import your feeds from those programs into your G-Reader. The fewer physical programs/apps/locations you have to go to get your updates and such, the easier it will be on your mindset.
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