Trawling through my files I came across this (as yet) unpublished post from the #remixSYD conference in May this year – and thought it timely to share as this week’s (semi regular and slightly late!) #throwbackthursday post.
At Remix Laura Demasi from IPSOS outlined key trends identified in the IPSOS study and what these mean in a digital world.
The whole report can be downloaded from the IPSOS website and here’s a summary of her talk:
- We’re not consumers – we are digital citizens … or just plain old people!
- There are plenty of facts around on consumption and trends but understanding what lies behind the numbers is more interesting, yet more complex
- Digital citizens are conflicted with their lives online:
- On the one hand they’re mad for devices and love having the world at their fingertips and that all aspects of their lives – work, personal and social – have converged in the one place
- BUT on the other hand, people are starting to step back, reflect and look more seriously how much their lives have changed in past 5-7 years, since smartphones, and researchers are starting to hear more about the downsides of lives increasingly lived online
- Connection fatigue – overwhelmed by a 24/7 culture
- Screen addiction is a concern
- Politics of online “friends” and the problems it can cause – this is a new social problem
- Is social media really “social”?
- Our worlds are colliding – how to keep work and online separate?
- The selfie culture – is this a bad thing? [IPSOS research suggests yes… I beg to differ – depends on the context, more in Ed Rodley’s post Selfie Conscious]
- Do kids have social skills now – they never have a chance to use them in real life? [but my question here was did the researchers actually speak to kids who are very articulate in how they use technology?]
- Is this the end of privacy as we know it?
- BUT no one is about to throw their phones out!
- When a new life changing technology comes in we binge, then the downsides emerge then we re-negotiate and form social norms and etiquette [this was also true for TV in the 1960s – has anything really changed?]
- How to help with this reflective and re-negotiation time is a key question to ask, remembering that solutions to technological problems are usually technologically-based!
Overall it was concluded that we all inherently love technology, but there is an increasing desire for it to help us it be more human, not less. As in everything, technology should be part of the solution, not the solution.
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