Rapid Growth
Whenever an industry grows too fast, gets exuberant attention from the public and media, and enjoys painful, if somewhat bloated, valuations from the stock market, it becomes rather easy to conclude that there is a bubble waiting to burst. Too many times in the past we have learned about industries benefitting from too much excitement over a very short amount of time. And in all these times, we have had a lesson to learn. So it only makes sense we should be cautious now. What am I talking about? Social media, of course.
What most of us do not recognize is that a bubble need not be economic alone. Yes, with crazy valuations, acquisitions and potential IPOs of young behemoths, an economic collapse that mirrors the 2001 dot.com bubble is the most reasonable assumption of a conclusion in this scenario.
But what about a social collapse?
No Signs of Slowing Down
The internet is growing and there is no sign of it slowing down anytime soon. One of the major drivers of this growth is social media and its ever spreading spider-like tentacles of inter-connectivity.
With rapid improvements if ‘social’ technology, we can developer relationships and friends, however artificial by the original definitions, in no time.
We are now connected in circles that are multitudes larger than the traditional psychological limits that were believed to exist earlier. Some may look at this as a means to reach way more people than we ever could, but at the cost of meaningful relationships. I would counter that with an understanding of an evolution of the meaning of friendships and human interaction.
If someone would argue that social media is not nearly as social at least compared to the nature of social interaction before the internet, I would counter that with a statement simply saying why does a comparison between a time before internet and today even seem warranted?
Evolution or Devolution
Even with this belief of constant evolution or devolution, I feel there is something we should be concerned about going forward. The economic bubble surrounding social media companies and services, if you can argue there is one, might not really collapse. Social media might evolve to adapt to the changing economic climate and still maintain relevance as far as it enjoys its life-blood – human capital and loyalty. But what happens when this loyalty devolves into decreased interaction between humans.
What if there is a critical limit that is reached when this is no longer perceived to be social media but merely media which is an appendage to real life and not central to it. This may not happen anytime soon, but with the growth in advertising, invasive social media and increasing co-dependency on real-life and online identities, this issue begs to consider what I consider ‘relationship inflation.’
Social media may lead to an understanding of evolving relationships but as far as real life relationships still exist, and these relationships won’t be dwindling anytime soon, there will be a strong demarcation between them. One is real, the other somewhat illusory. One requires voluntary upkeep while the other is largely taken care of by a curated portal.
If you thought that this would be an analysis of the bubble collapse wherein the dot.com bubble has its own little brother in 2012, you were wrong. I am considerably more concerned with the tipping point at which the human mind stops getting conditioned by non-substance relationships and rather taps into the tried-and-tested, real-life interactions that have historically been pivotal to our instinct and nature.
Although this may beg for intense, in-depth and comprehensive analyses of behavioral dynamics and psychology and human interaction studies, it does set us up to question what the next evolutionary social interaction mechanism or medium might be.