16 billion texts? 3.2 hours on social networks? Send 175 million tweets?
Wow.
The world has changed.
It wasn’t that long ago that smartphones were mostly in the hands of business professionals with Bluetooth earpieces walking through an airport. Blackberry, Palm, and Windows Mobile OS ruled these devices. Now, it seems, almost every cellular device marketed is a smartphone. Average consumers, professionals, even children and teenagers have these devices.
In 2007, Apple wowed the world with the iPhone. That was less than 7 years ago. Think about it. The ability to send 16 billion texts is greatly enhanced with a Qwerty keypad instead of a 10-digit keypad where you used to have to press the #2 three times to get the letter C to display. Facebook’s catastrophic growth, current focus on mobile, and large ad revenue is from these little (and more and more often, large), plastic-lined network communicators. Twitter can thank these mobile kiosks for its meteoric rise as well. When’s the last time you tweeted from a desktop or laptop computer?
The world has changed.
My daughter was born in 2007. She will grow up in a world where video calling someone has always been a possibility, where computers and screens will constantly be vying for her attention and stares, and real human connection will seemingly be trumped by sharing real-life experiences on an online bulletin board for whoever isn’t with you to see.
The world has indeed changed.
How are we going to interact with this new world? How will the billions and billions of screens either help or hurt humanity? More pressing for me personally: How will my kids turn out in a world seemingly ruled by texts, tweets, likes, apps, and pictures?
Hmmm…
