Social Media – Making us all a bit less sociable

I read a worrying post on the BBC the other day which discussed the evolution of social media and how it spanned the age demographics.  The author described a scene in his house on Christmas day in the living room.  With the TV showing the Christmas special of choice, for the family you had dad (the author) sat on an arm chair laptop on lap, twittering and blogging away.  Mum, similarly adding comments to her forum of choice whilst checking her news feeds for updates and the two children, iPod Touch in hand, using Facebook and messenger to chat with friends and engage with their own private networks.

Now I’m as big a geek as the next man.  I love finding the latest social tool to have a play around with.  I Twitter, use messenger, have a Facebook and a MySpace account (although the latter as been redundant for a long time).  But the thought of a family sat around on Christmas day silently tapping away on iPods and laptops depressed me slightly.

I don’t think I’m being too old fashioned when I say that Christmas should involve spending time with the family and actually engaging in some form of non-digital communication!  And it is not just in this scenario I see this happening, the workplace is just the same.  People emailing and messaging colleagues a question when they are sitting on desks less than 5 yards apart.

It seems strange that the ability to engage and communicate with people thousands of miles away means we communicate less with those closest to home.  Is this the way of the future?  Digital chat and social media replacing old fashioned speech and face to face engagement?

I sincerely hope not.  As much as I love using online social media tools I’m also rather fond of meeting and speaking to people face to face.  I have technophobe friends who refuse to have a Facebook account or personal email address giving the response, “If I want to speak to someone Ill just ring them.”  Whilst I am not going to go to that level of extreme as I see the benefits of social media tools away from connecting with friends, I hope for all our sake that the picture painted by the BBC reporter is not a sign of things to come.