I was talking to someone the other day who strongly believes that the next generation will
‘disconnect’. Naively, I thought he meant that they will hang up on you when you are talking to them
on the phone, but no. He meant a total disconnection from the world of digital chat. Social Media
being the main one.
Now as much as that sounds crazy (I said with an incredulous tone), he was adamant that it could
happen, and for a number of quite (annoyingly) sensible reasons.
Existing generations have witnessed the birth of the Social Media phenomena, and seen it become a
must-have. If you aren’t ‘on Social’ then you are missing out on ‘essential’ communication and
news sharing. Existing generations have caught the I’ve Got To Have It bug, but new generations will
simply grow up with it as just another thing in their life that is old-hat. The have to have the newest
thing craze will have moved onto something else and Social Media will not be the latest thing
anymore. You only want it because it is the latest thing, when it isn’t the latest thing any more, it’s
not so desirable.
Another reason they may disconnect is because of the growing realisation that actually Social Media
is starting to cause more problems than it is solving. Ok, it keeps people connected around the
world, but it also makes you openly available to everyone around the world whether you like it or
not. Once upon a time Social Media was a place to chat with friends, rekindle old friendships and
post photos about your holidays. Now it is a place for bullying, trolling and hacking. The new
generations are not going to want the hassle.
So the savvy thinkers of the next generation may well decide it is too intrusive, too annoying and
quite frankly not the best way of interacting with people. They may well think, and gosh what a
novel idea this is, that talking face to face is actually really rather nice.
What do you think?