The Anti-Social Effect of Social Media

By Jill Kurtz, Owner Kurtz Digital StrategyI’ve been waiting for someone to document this for a while: social media is actually making us less interested in face-to-face interaction.As reported by MediaPost, Swedish furniture giant IKEA polled 12,000 people in 12 big cities around the world and found that:68% of respondents said they prefer communicating with other people online. That includes people in their own home.26% of respondents ages 18-29 said they think having Wi-Fi is more important than a lounge room where they can entertain guests who visit in corporeal, physical form.19% of all respondents think online contact is more important than inviting friends over25% of respondents said if they had an extra hour per day to spend any way they wanted, they would choose to be alone.16% of respondents said they check social media in the bathroom.40% check social media when they wake up in the middle of the night.So, it seems the challenge for online communicators increasingly is not to carry offline conversations online, but to create relationships online with an audience with limited offline experiences. That’s a bit of a mind-bender![author]About the Author: Jill Kurtz founded Kurtz Digital Strategy to help clients see the communication potential of the newest trends and technologies. She is an expert at website strategy and redesign, social media planning, and developing exceptional content.[/author]