I think mobiles and social media are going to have a similar journey to junk food. If you really think about it, there’s a distinct possibility they will have a very homogeneous history arc.

Mobile devices have really only been available to the masses in earnest for the past 10-15 years. This being the case, there hasn’t been much time to pass to enable us as a species to truly understand the implications these devices will have on our lives both physically and mentally.

That’s going to be in our children’s hands as this is a legacy we have passed to them. They will grow up in a world where there has always been social media, selfies and hashtags.

Similar to the way we’re seeing a bit of a surge in health awareness I think we will see a rise in Mobile Addiction awareness in the next 5-10 years. In fact I think it’s starting to happen now... but ever so slowly.

If we look back in history when companies started mass producing food in the industrial revolution our societies slowly started eroding their focus from fresh, locally grown produce to long life, pre-packaged, sterile, high-fat, high in sugar, high in salt, tastes like cardboard, un-nutritional foods.

Throw into the mix the rise of fast food and we had a deadly combination that saw people taking less and less interest in their own personal nutrition and where their food came from. They put that trust instead into corporations that made and marketed the food they were consuming.

These corporations were into making profit, and still are. They will use any trick, gimmick or marketing message that will sell more units. This is happening to the detriment of the overall health of the very people that buy their sugar-laden, unhealthy ‘food’.

I can see that this process is happening with social media.

With the crossover of advertising into real life, reality TV and celebrity worship, it’s getting harder and harder to distinguish what’s actually real and what’s got an agenda behind it.

Mobile devices and social media are slowly eroding our bullshit detectors.

Constantly being on mobile devices and social media is almost like stockholm syndrome in a way. If you feed people enough bullshit with consistancy and frequency, sooner or later they’re going to start believing it. When you start believing the bullshit that people put on social media, you start wondering why your life isn’t as great as everyone else’s. Then you start feeling bad or guilty so you grab your mobile to escape, starting the whole process over again.

It would be great if there was a social media bullshit detector that put signs on posts like ‘fishing for compliments’ or ‘trolls because they hate themselves’ or ‘is really at home in their trackie-dacks’

That I would like to see!