How Addicted Are You?
Oct
12
Written by:
10/12/2010 3:26 PM
There is no denying the impact that social media has on the way we operate in our personal and professional lives. Incorporating Twitter and Facebook into my business while staying connected to emails with my blackberry has enabled me to keep one foot in the door at all times. Below is a summary of an interesting article I found that challenged college students to attempt to live in a social media free world.
When Adelphi University’s assistant athletic director, Suzette McQueen heard about a study conducted at the University of Michigan which challenged 200 students to refrain from all social media for a 24 hour period she thought it would be a great experiment for her 22 student sports public relations class. Only a handful of students made it the full 24 hours while the rest of the class went eight hours before their addiction got the best of them. Generation Z feels disconnected from society when they are unable to use social media even if they are physically next to their peers. The article stated that “the need to be in constant interaction is one characteristic that makes up Generation Z - a characteristic that is not accepted in most professional environments by today’s standards. As the earliest members of Generation Z begin entering the workforce in the next few years, it is interesting to see whether it will be the employees or the employers who will be the ones to adapt to the younger generation’s embedded trends.”
In the corporate world, a blackberry is used as an essential business tool which helps keep professionals connected and ahead of the game. Business professionals are constantly using their “crackberries” on every street corner, train station, restaurant. A survey by Stark Brooks Associates, a recruitment consultant, showed 97% of business people took their mobile phones during a holiday and 68% either a laptop or a Blackberry. Just over a third would not consider staying in a resort without wireless access. Society finds it extremely difficult to be cut off from social media but when does it become an obsession?
Do you consider yourself a social media addict?