How did you survive as kid without a mobile phone?
I recalled when I was younger, particularly during the summer holidays at home – I’d leave the house at 8:30am and not come home until 4pm to get my tea and then back out until 10pm.
What was amazing was I never remember sitting around waiting for my friends to turn up – everybody was always available, everybody knew what was going on – we were all plugged into what the biggest news was and what was popular. The funny thing is none of us had mobile phones or pagers … we occasion had walkie-talkies but the truth was they were always a waste of time as the range of them wasn’t that great and when we did get them working – we had nothing to say except to impersonate actors from American police series and truth was the limited-location meant we could hear each other without the walkie-talkies.
Today, we can’t survive without our mobile phones – kids are constantly attached to their mobile phones either on the move or at home around the dinner table.
I have practiced this in the past where are Operational Meetings – I have asked all attendees to place their mobile devices in the middle of the table before the meeting starts – obvious emergency interruptions are allowed.
It’s interesting how their uses have changed along with new developments in technology.
From just taking calls to SMS texting, through built in apps to fully fledged smart devices – all the way to your life revolving around smart devices where apps integrate into everything we do, say, think or disapprove of.
I’m always keen to know how uses of smart devices and social media have changed, an interesting article by Belle Beth Cooper illustrates ten social media statistics that may cause you to change you plan your strategy or even think about those busy typing way at the dinner table.
1. It’s not my age group, but it seems the opinions of the people born in the 1960s are making a return, the fastest growing age group on Twitter are the 55-64 year olds.
2. Instead of waiting to get home to update your Facebook status, you have for a while been able to update while on the move via your smart device. Of all the Facebook users, an amazing 2.2 million only access Facebook via their mobile device. I guess in developing countries where the technology infrastructure and where living accommodation is limited – mobile devices are widespread
3. With the credit crunch and lack of jobs, everybody is using every opportunity to promote themselves on the internet. LinkedIn provides a vehicle for this – which would explain why every second two new members join LinkedIn.
4. I had to include this – as it made me laugh – porn has always been a popular pastime (if I can call it that) – it was nice to hear that it had be surpassed as the number one activity on the web by social media.
5. 93% of marketers use social media for business, this with the background statistic that 80% of consumers use smart phones to shop, where 40% of them use their smart phone to compare prices – it’s encouraging that 93% of marketers use social media for business.
6. As mentioned in the introduction an amazing quarter of mobile device owners aged 18-44 say they cannot recall the last time their device wasn’t near them.
With all these changes in technology and their use in mobile device means that smart devices are here to stay and further developments means that Google Glasses and Apple’s iWatch is open to a major adoption by the public.