Narcissism Reigns in 2009

Posted on | January 11, 2010 | No Comments

Our lives are now deeply entrenched in the online world, with the proliferation of smart phones, laptops and Wi-Fi access at our fingertips it is nowadays rare not to be connected. These days, the irony is that if you want to escape from all this connectivity you actually have to make a concerted effort to ‘disconnect’. With cellphone roaming, skipping the country to go on holiday is no longer a guaranteed reprieve from the online obsession – unless of course, you are ‘lucky’ enough to be headed to a 3^rd world refuge, where Wi-Fi is not ubiquitous, you still have to pay for an Internet connection and your phone cannot pick up a signal. What is interesting to know, amidst this online activity, is what we’re actually doing in that vast space of the World Wide Web.

The answer, provided by Experian Hitwise, is not a surprise, why, we are engaging, connecting, sharing, uploading photos, expressing excitement, frustration, disdain and in the latest craze even updating our friends, and friends of friends of the colour or our underwear. That’s right, we’re ‘Facebooking’, jumping on ‘FB’ because the most searched term in 2009 was Facebook.

Hitwise Top Searched Terms 2009

Surprising, I think not. It is our portal to our friends, our uninterrupted monologue as we share what is happening in our own lives while absorbing the events of those around us. From engagements, births to wedding photos, it all happens on Facebook. We are more connected and more involved with people that we might never have spoken to again, but on Facebook we can now track whom old highschool friends are dating and quite actively track the dating successes & failures of those who are still playing the field.

Facebook will no doubt continue to be important in 2010. I only hope that as we dive further into the digital world, we do not completely forget that there is interaction beyond the digital screen.