(The following is a possible excerpt from my new book The Recommendation Age)

For a long time there has been a deserved suspicion about the dulling affect that over-consumption of entertainment media can have on mental skills. Television addicts can become mind numbed couch potatoes, etc. and never again have an original thought. Similar concern arose from teachers and parents of children who seemed addicted to hand-held gaming devices.  So in turn one might judge too quickly that the tsunamic spread of social media across the face of social culture will quickly dull overall social awareness and weaken social skills to the admittedly shallow levels one typical reads in social media posts.  It is more likely that social media participants are merely enjoying greater opportunity to sharpen the social awareness and skills they have. Granted the content of a majority of social media postings are brief and often meaningless to all but a few intended readers.  Most of the connections made are shallower than the more romantic days of hand written letters. Tweets are never likely to compare in richness with Sonnets From the Portuguese. And perhaps the high and still growing dependence on communications technology makes familiarity with finer verse less likely. But rather than dulling users, social media is actually making users more socially sensitive. A different kind of social sophistication is emerging, which we must understand is the true source of social media’s power to influence buyers and sellers. What is becoming sharper is grassroots attentiveness to the minds and lives of others. Under the shear culture changing pressure of growing social media proficiency and the long nurtured hunger to connect we are beginning to relearn to let others into areas of our lives we closed off before. This most intimate aspect is happening more slowly. But I can say that now I know more about the daily lives, struggles, likes and dislikes, hopes, and health of people I haven’t seen in many years than I used to know about my immediate family. I frequently hear this same general sentiment expressed by others. This is happening because people are eager to share their lives. This impulse to share is the core energy of the Recommendation Age. Everything is personal now and people are loving it.