I love social media. It’s no secret - I evangelise constantly about using social media for professional development.  But I don’t really have anything original to say today - go read Phil Bradley, instead.

What I would like to talk about is one of the original social media tools. An astounding invention, that allowed you to communicate across vast distances, and chat, in real time, to your friends.

Yes, it’s the telephone.

Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/antcaz/2178147322/

Brought to my attention today by this article on Stephen’s Lighthouse, which says that:

81% of smartphone users make calls every day compared with 53% of regular users.

81%?? Really? I mean, really??? One of the reasons I have a smartphone is so that I don’t have to make calls - I can use my other social media tools, instead.  Rather than ring, I’ll text you, email you, @ you, DM you, Google you for directions & opening times. Actually picking up a phone and talking to someone is my very last resort.

I don’t like talking to people without visual clues. If I have to do so, I’d much rather interact through text, where you can take time to frame your thoughts, weigh your words, and add suitable emoticons.  Maybe it’s being an introvert, but speaking to people on the phone just downright makes me nervous.

Especially when they ring me. There’s nothing that puts you on the spot more than an unexpected phone call. One minute you’re sitting happily in your un-hoovered living room, next thing you know a relative’s on the phone, asking if they can visit.  ’No!’ you want to shriek, ‘I haven’t hoovered for weeks!’. But you can’t. It’s think on your feet, fly by the seat of your pants time. And that seemingly-innocuous ‘how are you?’ at the start of every phone call? Treat it with suspicion…

October 7th.—Extraordinary behaviour of dear Rose, with whom I am engaged—and have been for days past—to go and have supper tonight. Just as I am trying to decide whether bus to Portland Street or tube to Oxford Circus will be preferable, I am called up on telephone by Rose’s married niece, who lives in Hertfordshire, and is young and modern, to say that speaker for her Women’s Institute to-night has failed, and that Rose, on being appealed to, has at once suggested my name and expressed complete willingness to dispense with my society for the evening. Utter impossibility of pleading previous engagement is obvious; I contemplate for an instant saying that I have influenza, but remember in time that niece, very intelligently, started the conversation by asking how I was, and that I replied Splendid, thanks—and there is nothing for it but to agree.

From ‘The Provincial Lady Goes Further’ by E M Delafield

Yet I know that other people love it. They would much rather pick up the phone and speak to someone than spend 20 minutes composing an email and 4 hours waiting for a reply. It suits the way they live, it suits the way they work.  J constantly berates for me for this, when I’m fretting over an unanswered text. ‘Just ring them! Then you’ll know! Without all this faffing!’, while I sink quietly into a corner of the sofa and resign myself to not knowing whether we’re going for drinks until it’s too late to go for drinks.

I probably don’t come across too well on the phone. I’m always startled when the phone rings, and pick it up with trepidation. I don’t have a relaxed phone manner. At the first possible opportunity, I’ll usually say ‘oh, can you email me…?’. In short, I probably give the impression that I don’t want to talk to you, which is sort of true - but it’s not the ‘you’, it’s the ‘talk’.

So how am I going to turn this rant about my phone habits into a post that’s actually vaguely related to the topic in hand? Well, we were asked to consider if there were any drawbacks to social media, and whether we think it really helps to foster a sense of community.  

Here, then, is one of the drawbacks: for every social media platform, there will be someone who hates it.  Someone who feels excluded from the community because they really don’t like the technology they’re using to communicate. It’s not that they don’t want to interact, it’s just that they’re naturally disinclined to interact in this specific way. Which also means that if/when they do try to join in, they might not come across very well - they might seem rude, or abrupt, or just not very interesting.  

But that’s probably not what they’re like, really. That’s them as intermediated by a piece of technology they’re unfamiliar and uncomfortable with. It’s like someone talking through a microphone for the first time - in fact, with social media it’s more like a megaphone.  More people can hear them, but no-one will actually know what their voice sounds like.

Social media is wonderful, and uniting, and community-building, and I really, honestly do love it.  But it’s not a panacea. It’s not a universal connector. Twitter’s pins do not fit in everyone’s holes. So think before you unfollow. Is this a person who you just feel no need to listen to? Or is it someone who might blossom in another setting, free from the 140 character limit?

For every Hangout that closes, let’s open a Huddle.