We all have read the writing on the wall. The mobiles are changing the way people live. Already everyone has a cell phone - family, friends, students - and even maids, drivers, plumbers. But there is another writing on the wall. Most mobiles will be "smartphones" - I guess already 50% of the beings on the campus are carrying a smartphone. I define a smartphone as one which can connect and browse the net. These days every phone costing more than r Rs 10000 has an internet connectivity. What are the consequences of this?
A survey of 1500 smart phone users shows that people with smartphones have twice the propensity of ordinary cell users to connect to the net ! Among smartphone users, 45% check email constantly during the day via multiple devices ( phone, PC) and 28% check Facebook with the same frequency, The same figures for non-smartphone users were 28% and 12% respectively.
I am already beginning to see this in our classrooms. The students don't need a laptop anymore to be on the net - they can now do it by merely looking down under the table and reading off their smartphones. Even the mentors in a major company mentioned recently that attention spans are coming down and it is difficult to make people sit in one place and concentrate for a given time - to complete an assignment or an essay or something which requires reflection and creativity. What do you think?
The reduction of attention spans is a reality which we have to learn to adapt to. TV, internet, FB, Twitter have ensured that an individual wants to do 100 things and multi task in the same available time of 24 hours in a day. Psychological hard wiring by understanding the concept of "delayed gratification" is the need. For marketeers it is a humongous problem. Occupying the perceptual mind space of the consumer where there are already 1000 products and goods.
ReplyDeleteNice Blog sir.