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DWT is the new DUI
By Michael Tchong
It’s 11 p.m., do you know where your kids are? Well, if they’re like most teens, they’re probably texting. And if they’re licensed to drive, they’re probably texting and driving. Yes, as the media recently reported, DWT (driving while texting) has started to replace DUI (driving under the influence) as the imminent future’s new danger zone.
Welcome to the digital lifestyle. As technology becomes increasingly enmeshed with the fabric of life, hyperchange abounds. Even among the die-hard British, an astonishing 85 percent of the U.K. workforce takes less than a full hour for lunch. Culprit: a digital office culture. Sure, we still occasionally stop to smell the roses, but in a world where more than half of American workers neglect to take all their vacation days, according to recruitment firm Hudson, we will soon lack time for anything.
Unless it involves checking e-mail. According to Mike Song, co-author of “The Hamster Revolution: How to Manage Your EMail Before It Manages You” (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2007), about 40 percent of a typical workday is spent on e-mail. That’s based on a study of 8,000 employees who work at major corporations, surveyed over a three-year period by Song and his co-authors.
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| "One-third of Americans were suffering from something it called “celebrity-worship syndrome.” |
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With broadband users spending an average of 48 percent of their free time online during a typical weekday, or one hour and 40 minutes, according to a recent Center for Media Research survey, it should surprise no one that Frozen Food Age magazine Publisher Christopher Loretto once exclaimed: “It’s not ‘Leave It to Beaver’ America anymore.”
How would Beaver fare in a world where his famous TV mom, June Cleaver, would undoubtedly be cast by Digiwood as an “alpha mom” – a mother who spends 87 minutes a day online, according to comScore Networks, and who, as a leader of the pack, outspends typical Internet users by more than 7 percent while influencing how other moms spend their money.
Still, we wouldn’t put it past the new Beaver, a splendid symbol of ’50s success, to be blogging about our favorite poster child of ’00s excess, Britney Spears, whose latest adventures – stoked by her fave cocktail du moment, the Purple Hooter – have been landing her on all the celebrity-gawking blogs of late.
“Pleased to meet you, won’t you guess my name,” The Rolling Stones famously sang. Plug in this second line, “Voyeurism is the name of my game.” Yes, the digital lifestyle has itself sparked yet another ubertrend, one I’ve insightfully dubbed “voyeurgasm.”
It’s the trend that led New Scientist magazine to declare in 2003 that one-third of Americans were suffering from something it called “celebrity-worship syndrome.”
Propelled by a boom in camcorders, camera phones and digital cameras, the world is getting ready to unleash a torrent of consumer-generated media, or CGM, as pressed-for-time cognoscenti like to call it. On YouTube, alone, millions of videos are posted each day. Already, there are more than 83 million blogs, with a mind-numbing 175,000 added every day.
No wonder our tired, instant-gratification-seeking, multitasking and short-bandwidth masses are so hard to pin down. They’ve already cast aside newspapers, which reported an ignominious drop in revenue earlier this year. At USA Today, the largest U.S. newspaper, ad revenue was down 14 percent in February, compared with a year ago. Ad revenue at The New York Times fell 7.5 percent. At The Wall Street Journal, it was off 10 percent.
And once our digital Beaver gets his mobile phone, he’d probably be texting too. Perhaps not while driving, because he was such a “good kid,” but certainly while biting down on this tofu sandwich while juggling a can of Red Bull and his video iPod.
Here’s another sign of our twisted times. A recent report found that tweens were more prone to multitasking than their “ancient” teen peers. The difference was slight, but telling of future direction.
So, buckle up, because I’ll be checking my CrackBerry while blasting you through this blurry landscape.
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Michael Tchong is a trend analyst and transformational speaker on phenomena that are sweeping America and the rest of the world. He can be found living on the information superhighway at the ubercool.com.
Ubercool.com |
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