Digital Etiquette Archives - THE ADVICE COLUMN FOR SOCIAL MEDIA: DEAR SMARTPHONE

Year-End Dear Smartphone

On a pink background rests an alarm clock, so it forms the number zero. Then 2020 is spelled out. The quote says :"year's end is neither an and nor beginning but a going on." — Year-end Dear Smartphone ( image: EdSys)

The year-end Dear Smartphone column in 2019 was about shopping online and holiday pandemonium. It was a prophetic post: “Maybe a future Christmas will put less emphasis on running between stores and accumulating presents and place more weight on taking holiday images, sharing symbols of the season, or just staying home.”

Covid did for Dear Smartphone what Keywords could never accomplish. During 2020 there was a cultural reckoning with smartphones and digital devices. We all became more aware of how we are connected at the hip by them.

In 2020 staying safe, sane, and sage required us to manage our devices with more insight.

March 3rd, began a new era of questions and postings, on topics ranging from the transmission of germs to the transmission of social information.

Equity and Access

At the beginning of the Covid virus, it became apparent that people were turning to the Internet, but not everyone had access. As schools shut down, students from less affluent households lacked the ability to attend online classes. So, voices were raised about digital equity and access. Older people had similar concerns. Many lacked high speed access as well as the knowledge of how to find friends and classes online or trust the grocery order.

Further into March and April, those blessed with Internet access complained that being online all day made them grouchy and tired. Readers began to query about helping kids moderate digital time and develop other interests. There were equal queries about supporting older people, and getting them up to speed with apps, online payments and Apple watches.

Not surprisingly, the dual topics of digital etiquette and digital mental health rose to the top this year as readers spent more and more time on their devices. Someone asked “Is my smartphone making me sick?

Zoom, Ablaze, More….

Dear Smartphone offered commentary on using Zoom, Snapchat, Robinhood, TikTok, and the now defunct Quibi. Questions about Zoom, not surprisingly, led the pack. One column, which led to a graphic Instagram post, asked whether it is safe to ‘Zoom Zoom’ in the car (the answer is No No unless parked).

In August and September, there was a telecomm pivot as California forest fires blazed close to home. Dear Smartphone advised readers of the emergency links published in local papers. There was a reminder that there are no telecom safety nets. Landline phones can fail at the central office, cordless phones depend on electricity or batteries, and mobile phones need the relay towers to be intact.

The Cancelled…

It is noteworthy to consider what did not take place in 2020, the blazes that did not happen. 2020 did not turn out to be the year of privacy. Before the year began, safety protocols were supposed to be set in place for data and sharing, but they flew out the window with the pandemic. In order to get tested for the virus or help monitor the spread, smartphone users opted to provide location and social data. Even more worrisome, some phones had operating systems that defaulted to Bluetooth and GPS for the sake of Covid tracing.

2020 also cancelled the idea that you could protect kids from phones until a certain age. It became clear that digital devices were integrated into their daily lives, like seeds inside a fruit. Although we are not there yet, children need to be schooled in digital literacy- think of it like a driver’s license, you guide young people with instruction and supervision until they know the rules of the road, engage safely, and are responsible out and about.

Looking OldeR, Looking Forward…

At the other end of the age spectrum, 2020 also made it clear that older people need to have digital tools to interact and stay connected. Voice activated devices could be their key for transformational changes in keeping social, ordering goods, online classes, and banking. Today, Siri and Alexa provide some assistance, but being nimbler with phones could be an unrealized asset to help older generations stay cognitively active and alert.

2021 opens the next chapter for Dear Smartphone and its readers. The pandemic will wind down and we will settle into healthier and gainful relationships with each other as well as with our devices. If 2020 was the year in which everything, including Covid went viral, 2021 will be the year in which we learn to harbor digital immunities.

Does Screen Size Matter?

Is it the small screen or a small attention span when it comes to a digital meeting?!

A hand holds up a phone and on their phone is a Zoom meeting with four pictures of people. There is also a yellow coffee cup in the picture. — Does the Screen Size Matter for the Meeting?
photo credit: Angela Lang, CNET

Dear Ms. Smartphone: My colleague and I were on a conference call together, but she took the meeting from home on her computer, while I joined in from my home, and over my phone. When it was over and we compared notes, she had lots of observations and remembered interesting points that were relevant for our company. I could barely recall any. Was it me, or was it that I used my phone to connect and screen size does matter? Neal, San Francisco

Dear Neal: Your question is reminiscent of that old Marshall McLuhan expression that “the medium is the message.” At one time everyone used desktop computers for meetings, but now they have moved on to smaller screens and laptops. Is it the screen size that makes a difference or what McLuhan called hot and cold media? We will never know as McLuhan died before the invention of smartphones.

Chances are if you took the call on your phone, you were also wearing headphones and walking around. Mobile phones are by definition ‘mobile,’ but when we move about, we rely on our operating faculties, many of them at a sub-conscious level, to stay upright and not trip over things. We are not aware of our divided attention, since it takes place at an automatic level. As this column often notes, mobility and smartphones don’t play well together in cars or on foot. So, the mobility factor might explain why the conference call had more depth for your colleague.

Small IS NOT BETTER

Another factor could be that you missed detail on the smaller screen of the phone. Imagine that you streamed the play Hamilton to your phone. Yes, you would see if Aaron Burr was on center stage and perhaps get his lyrics, but you probably would not be able to register Thomas Jefferson and the mob moving about in the background. When you use a small screen to conference, you might hear the speakers, but miss the sidelines.

Some confirmation comes from a recent University of Michigan/Texas A&M study. The researchers found that participants reading news on their phone screens were “less attentive and activated” by what they saw. Now, that may not be what happened in your online meeting, but you get the drift.

Big Conventions Too!

There are also conventions built into how we use the phone, as well as how we interact with the computer. When we use phones, it’s not unusual to scroll and open a new screen when we are interrupted by the ping of an incoming text message. Workers between ages 25 and 34 spend 6.4 hours a day checking their email, and you might have been distracted out of sheer habit.

Finally, I can’t leave the topic without suggesting that you and your colleague might have begun the meeting with different frames of mind. She may have begun with high expectations, and that led her use the laptop, and perhaps (we don’t know) take notes on a piece of paper or alt screen. You may have approached the conference with other priorities, and that led you to pre-select the phone. We like to think that the medium (the technology) is making the choices for us, but that’s not always the full picture, pun intended.

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Can Older People be Influencers?

Older people are on Facebook. Are they stoked to be social media influencers too?

This is a graphic by Francis Scialabba. It depicts a megaphone poking out of the screen of a smartphone. The graphic suggests that phones use devices to be attention grabbers. — Credit: *Francis Scialabba*. Calling all Influencers!

Dear Ms. Smartphone: I liked the career advice for the teen who wanted to be a social media influencer, but what about older people?! I am in my late seventies and am tired of those ads on TV where famous people with gray hair pitch drugs for aches and pains or reverse mortgages. Can’t I be an influencer too? I am on Facebook almost every day. Vera, Tiburon

Dear Vera: You are absolutely right that influencer marketing is aimed towards younger people, mostly those under age 30, while TV ads target “pills” and “poopers.”

Posting on Facebook falls in a different category, even though it is media and you said you check it regularly. Chances are your account is private, and you have a circle of friends and family that you post for. You are connecting with them, but not trying to get unknown people and strangers to also interact through messages or photos. Facebook is the most commonly used social media by people over 60. Pew reports that 37% of the Silent Generation and 60 percent of the Baby Boomers had accounts, and that was before the Covid Pandemic. Facebook is good for keeping up social connections. Think of it like the newsy Christmas Card that keeps coming all year!

Influentials vs. Influencers

There’s a modern-day distinction between influencers and influential older people. There are many older people who make headlines and do important things (think Dr. Fauci, the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Oprah Winfrey, Maye Musk). These famous names will show up in a list when you search for seniors who are/have been influencers but they do less “pitch” on social media.

They are not influencers, in the social media sense of the word. A social media maven creates content, and a brand, say ‘Warby Parker’ or ‘Toyota’, then associates with them because it draws in like-minded people they would like to reach. BTW, there is probably a marketing agency in the middle of this transaction, holding the marriage together with contracts and revenue. Just this week, there was an announcement that some brands will try to initiate the content and post it on the influencer’s site, after getting their permission. That could corrupt the influencer process, as it stands today.

Quirky TUrkeys

When I searched for older, senior influencers, I was a struck by two things. There are lists of older people who are ‘top ten’ online. But, many of these are quirky older people who are experienced with attention-getting from their former careers as models or fashion designers. They struck me as odd birds in their psychedelic outfits and feathered costumes. They defied my stereotype of age, but not necessarily in a good way. Second, these leaders did less connecting ‘your brand to their content’– the way that modern kids do through a daily vlog or diary. These influencers seemed more like narcissists trapped parroting a campy narrative to copy youngsters. Many were not displaying that cool “authentic voice.”

My concern is that younger people, and those in charge of the advertising machinery, view these older influencers as a curiosity. They are something to be oogled, not because their content is a shared slice of daily life, but because the jarring images covertly reinforce a young person’s game, a hip image-based culture.

REFOCUS THAT IMAGE, Please!

More specifically, older people are not shown showing their strengths. In the words of MIT author/researcher Joseph Coughlin, they control up to seventy percent of the nation’s consumer spending, and are a trillion-dollar component of the economy. Older people have untapped consumer power. They also have a lot social media savvy, but it’s trapped in static messages on Facebook and captured less on video. Only the outspoken have jumped to younger platforms like Tik-Tok, Snap, and YouTube, perhaps because each site begins with cameras and a steep learning curve.

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