The Early Effects of The Club House App On Users’ Lives
The new social media audio app that’s changing lives is also harming people’s daily routines
Social media affects your life from the first time you interact with it.
And although I’m convinced of that, I had to delete one word after first wrote that opening line. Because although I was sure of the point I was making, one word didn’t fit right to properly explain the impact social media will have in the future too.
What’s that one word that I deleted?
“View”
And more specifically it would have made the opening sentence:
“Social media affects your life from the first time you view it.”
But as soon as I wrote that I realized I was incorrect.
Because I had to broaden the sentence to include not only social media that we look at but other more modern forms of social media that don’t concentrate on the visual aspect of things primarily.
For when Club House came along in 2020 it soon caused a lot of excitement and expectation in the whole social media industry. And it wasn’t primarily visual, because it’s an audio-based app.
Unlike many of the successful social media apps out there such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter which are all very different but at the same time concentrate highly on the visual aspect of things, Club House seems more old-fashioned in its initial concept.
Yet audio has proven to capture the imagination of millions of people rapidly.
And like all other social media apps, there are many disadvantages to its as well as advantages too.
Club House allows users to interact with speakers as if they were on a call-in radio show. There is one speaker at a time that has a virtual microphone and a profile with a bio. Everyone else in the virtual room listens and if you’re on the stage you can speak and verbally interact with the main speakers on the stage.
Of course, if you’re not on the stage and only in the room then you’re in the virtual audience within that virtual room.
That means that your experience is more like listening to the radio.
However, you can be requested to come onto the virtual stage or you can request to come on it yourself if you feel you’ve something to give to the main topic that’s being addressed in the room.
Although Club House is one of the more recent concepts in social media after years of visually dominated social media sites, by the early months of 2021 when it first took off in popularity it was clear their many disadvantages to the app and how it can affect our lives.
Firstly, although there was extremely high-value content being shared across a variety of topics on many of the virtual stages there, users were unable to record the conversations. And although rooms could go on for days on end with various experts speaking on the same topic over and over again, once the room was over the information was no longer accessible to the listener.
This caused a lot of excitement and listeners felt as if they were fortunate to listen to the top-class information and this created a spike of excitement and made listeners listen longer and more intently.
There were many sleepless nights for listeners in those early rooms as people were worried that they’d miss out on golden nuggets of information that would get them ahead in the world. And missing out on this much sleep is not good for your health. It’s certainly not good for your cognition when thinking about the new information that you’re listening to.
And unless you put the new information into action you’re not going to gain the advantages in your life.
Because if you’re listening for hours without end daily you can’t be doing properly.
Some people took days off here and there but came back into rooms saying that they had to return as they had a fear of missing out on information from many hugely successful people that we’re giving away their secrets for no cost at all. People explained in rooms how they’d completely lost their routine in life and were drawn into the rooms and the idea that being there was better than their real lives that had existed for a long time before the app had pulled them on board.
But for millions of its users at the time their countries were largely in lockdown and with social distancing laws meaning they couldn’t visit their family and friends owning to the Covid-19 pandemic.
So Club House proved a great place to meet new people and get to know them through the sound of their voice.
Connections were made in the early weeks that will no doubt last a lifetime for many who spoke on stage. Collaborations resulted in new business dealings and listening deeply and loyalty to working as a team on stage became another positive trait of the app.
As for all the other social media that came before, many users of Club House reported that they didn’t have the same draw for them anymore because they couldn’t personally interact with the speakers or content creators.
So although there has been a lot of negative information perceived by cynics out there regarding social media and the potential for addiction, perhaps an app that demands good listening skills, patience, and attention can change the world’s perception of all social media in the coming years ahead?
Only time will tell.
Until then, let’s just listen and wait and see.
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