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How America's digital binge is effecting print and what to expect in the future

A NEW EXPERIENCE WITH NO CONSTRAINTS
As a college student, attending the University of Arizona in the late-eighties, my fraternity would often throw parties on the weekends. Unless it was a theme party or a special event, we would spread the word about these "weekenders" by describing them in terms of the number of kegs of beer that would be available. On any given Friday you might hear us saying things like, "come by the house tonight, we're having a 10 kegger," or "a twenty kegger!" The parties we threw were not perceived or described by us in terms of social comradery, but rather, in terms of how much would be available to drink. Drinking was something new to most of us, something we used in order to separate ourselves from our past and distinguish ourselves as adults. We would drink until the kegs were empty and some of my most committed brothers would stay up until dawn to make sure the kegs were empty. We were indulging to excess, a behavior commonly referred to as binging.

Fast forward eight years later. I was a young digital designer, with a budding freelance career, when I was afforded an opportunity to work in Italy for a major game developer. I flew to Milan to work on a dream assignment for a dream company. What I gained was a whole new perspective on life. One of the perks of the assignment was early dismissal on Fridays at twelve noon, while not having to return to work until ten-thirty on Monday mornings. This allowed me a lot of extra time for weekend travel and travel I did. I jumped on trains with my teammates and we would head South to learn about the Italian culture and experience all the gifts that had been left for us to discover - from the Statue of David to the Tower of Pisa. In the evenings, after sight-seeing all day, we would stop at local bars to celebrate the days events.

Italian bars are very different from American bars. They are not a place to consume large amounts of alcohol, but rather, a focal point for the town's people to gather and socialize. It's what I discovered there that amazed me as much as any statue I saw along the way. While the legal drinking age in Italy is 16, children with adult supervision could routinely be seen drinking wine at restaurants and it is common for children as young as ten years old to have a glass of wine with dinner at home. As I investigated the differences between Italian and American cultures regarding alcohol use among young people, what I learned surprised me. The teenage alcoholism rate in Italy is less than half that of the United States. With so much alcohol readily available to young people, why was this the case? The answer may lie in history. Italians have celebrated with wine for thousands of years, they have had time to create social standards around its use and severe social stigmas for those who abuse it or use it to excess.

DIGITAL BINGING AND HOW IT HAS SHAPED US

Now, I see this type of over indulgence occurring across all of Western civilization, with the way we use smartphones and other handheld devices, much in the same way my fraternity brothers and I used alcohol in college. I call it "digital binging" and I see its symptoms as no different than college-aged kids discovering alcohol for the very first time.

These days, we use handheld devices as an excuse to opt-out of real relationships - at any given moment. We join social networks online and discover a new sense of place and even of self. Now, our friends are no longer limited to the people we know personally, instead we readily accept more artificial relationships with thousands of "friends" we may never really know or ever meet face-to-face. We have become drunk on this new technology - carrying out our emotional lives in a digital world. So drunk, in fact, that we confuse what it means to be social with what we post on Facebook or Twitter with little thought to what we leave behind in the process - the ability to sit quietly with a friend as they grieve or to hold someone's hand as they share important news with us.

Suddenly, what is not "Facebookable" no longer seems as important or socially relevant as it once did. In this "drunken state", some even go so far as to prefer their identities online to their identities in real-life. Media companies such as Time Magazine have drastically changed their formats to keep up with an ever-changing online membership and some, like Newsweek, have mistaken this digital binge for the future of mass-communication by leaving print behind all together. What they did not consider is that this binge won't last.

DIGITAL NATIVES AND HOW THEY WILL SAVE US

People under the age of twenty are what I refer to as "digital natives". They have grown up with the internet and, to a large degree, mobile devices. However, most twentysomethings don't see the internet as "all grown up". They are more skeptical and prone to question virtual relationships in ways which those of us who are older do not or cannot. Many young adults, in their late teens, are all too familiar with the horrors of driving while texting. Still others have found themselves victims for life from spur of the moment activities such as sexting.

In the next decade, with more and more laws in place to help create boundaries for this new landscape, thinking about social media will become a way to think about what we mean to each other in a very real sense. In the coming decade, we will experience a conscious shift in thinking away from mistaking things like random Tweets as authentic communication as we come to terms with what it truly means to be human outside of our digital bubbles. Much in the same way that Italians have had centuries to experience the social impacts of alcohol, digital natives will become increasingly aware of the negative impacts of technology and will create and justify ways to mitigate its' potential to destroy us as social beings.

WHAT THIS ALL MEANS FOR THE FUTURE OF PRINT

Now, and in the future, print will continue to play an important role in the way we communicate with each other. It will continue to be regarded as a tangible way to transmit our ideas and emotions. The change in the future will be in how it is integrated with technology. Already, we are beginning to see print contain new technologies, in the form of QR Codes and NFC chips, to bring people more content and to interact with them on a higher level. These technologies actually make print more relevant as it remains the preferred vehicle to carry this technology to the end-user. Perhaps print has been overlooked in the past few years as we come to terms with our digital selves, but its future looks bright as it becomes a vehicle that may be scanned to bring people more information about a product, service or organization.

Publishers, manufacturers and advertisers who rely on print as a method of communication should embrace the notion that print, as we know it, may be coming to an end, but the print-to-digital world is just beginning. The future of print will be an integrated hybrid of paper and codes that will create more of an interactive experience for people who enjoy the feel, smell and sound of paper as they flip the pages of their favorite magazine or newspaper. Consumer packaged goods will also become more interactive, offering everything from recipes to instructions to prizes, all on the side of a box, with the simple scan of a smartphone.

Those who say "print is dead" will be singing a different tune in the coming years as a resurgence in print media begins to take hold and consumers sober up from a decade of binging in a digital landscape.

This blog post was selected from the PRITN2D Papers, a series of articles published in the Spring of 2013 by noted mobile developer and QR Code designer - Philip Warbasse.

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Comments

  1. Jason Speers, 25 Mar 2013
    Incredibly well written and insightful - thank you! reply
  2. Lori Nelson, 25 Mar 2013
    There is hope for print! reply
  3. Ron Pearlman, 25 Mar 2013
    Great article! We are using QR Codes now on signs and packaging and it is helping to expand our consumer base. reply
  4. Karin Reeve, 26 Mar 2013
    Very well written. Thank you. I enjoy most of the digital media, but things such as a subscription to an art magazine will never have the same effect on me online, as they do sitting back in my chair and reading it .... on paper. reply
  5. Don Newberry, 27 Mar 2013
    Wow, very interesting perspective. Having two teenage daughters, I think you are onto something. As a printer I am happy to see this perspective and agree that the times will change towards a better future for print. reply
  6. Julie Germond, 28 Mar 2013
    I love your blog, please keep up the great posts! reply
  7. Regina Cummings, 28 Mar 2013
    Very interesting article. I especially can see the packaging becoming internet integrated. reply
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