Perhaps we are much less tolerant of our extended families who descend on our homes for Christmas Day afternoons? Perhaps the TV wasn’t quite as good as expected?
I know you’re keen to push on with the New Year to realise plans, consolidate debts and so on - but before then, I’m going to drag you back to Christmas morning. On that most magical day of the year a child was born unto the World, gifts are given and received and British citizens engaged in an apparent frenzy of social networking.
Recently published stats from Hitwise are claiming that in the UK this year, 1 in every 22 Internet visits on Christmas Day were to Facebook.
That’s an increase of 69 per cent on 2007, making it (after Google) the second most visited site in the Country on that most sacred of days.
Whilst some initial responses from the blogosphere have taken this as further evidence of the shredding of familial fabric, we should take a balanced pause.
This is simply news that the site was visited a lot on Christmas Day, not evidence that any majority spent a sociopathically unhealthy day on it. At this most social time of year, effective tools which can not just increase, but rather augment communication should be embraced.
Demographic data is absent from these figures, but if this is in line with Facebook’s own statistics we can assume that these aren’t all native-nerds. This is digital literacy conspicuously increasing, digital participation becoming normalised and not necessarily at the expense of a ‘real-life’ bitter argument with your relatives. We can irritate each other just as effectively in the flesh.
It probably won’t surprise you to learn that it’s not just us, America had a similar experience with Facebook getting 2.8 per cent of all visits.
American analyst Heather Hopkins attempts to explain this with a variety of theories including bad weather or possibly boredom, before concluding that it was most likely that people were logging on to wish each other a happy Christmas.
More worrying, and what Hopkins misses, is the 24 hour gap between the UK and US peaks in this friending frenzy. In the USA their plateau arrived on Christmas Eve and then (as best we can make out from the graph on this page) usage dropped radically the next day. The UK spent its time friending on Christmas Day, ie. Facebook was pulling our focus after the presents had been opened.
What might we glean from this? Perhaps in the UK we are that much less tolerant of our extended families who descend on our homes for Christmas Day afternoons? Perhaps the TV wasn’t quite as good as expected? Most likely though, is that the Americans simply got better presents.
Damn.
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