Robin SmithSocial media has absolutely changed our communication.
This year in May, Facebook reported it had 1.65 billion active users. Of those active among their digital friends, 50 minutes daily are devoted to online Facebook posting of opinions, recipes and comments related to a universe of “friends” and their digital content.
There are about 320 million active Twitter users who learn to read the 140-character messages and respond with abbreviations and emojis to fit the limits of space. Moving further away from text, Instagram has 400 million monthly active users posting photos with limited text. Snapchat, a mobile photo messaging app, uses impermanence as its draw – posted content disappears after 10 seconds.
As of 2016, we spent almost two full hours online daily (global internet usage is actually 118 minutes), up from 109 daily minutes in 2015.
In this environment where the written word is found in various content forms via different platforms, who reads books anymore? You know, the physically bound paper with leaved pages of the written word, often downloaded via Kindle, Google books or other formats?