Tech Ability and Access: How YoPros Have An Edge and Why We Need to Give Back

In my New Media and PR class last week we touched on the corporate trend of establishing highly responsive customer service teams on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Several classmates shared examples of how they tweeted to various companies like JetBlue about flight delays or booking issues and were responded to within minutes; they even occasionally received additional perks and touchpoints from those customer service reps. It's an amazing innovation in customer service, and as someone who has used Twitter to praise and bring up issues with companies like Zappos, Comcast, Peter Pan and Greyhound Bus lines, and HootSuite, it is refreshingly satisfying to receive a direct response (even if it isn't a solution) from an identifiable person. But when I think about the hours I have wasted on the phone to get someone at Sprint to pick up the phone and then get transferred to eight different departments, I began to wonder if other people are still forced to endure that lack of customer service because of the mediums they utilize? Does (unintentional) discrimination exist for communities that either don't have the tech literacy (e.g. the elderly) or access (e.g. low-income families) to use social media?

Plugging In and Bugging Out

As a person who just got an iPhone 6 months ago, I am a little late to the smartphone party. Full disclosure: the only reason I got it was because I thought I had lost my trusty flip phone in a cab and had been told by Verizon that they didn't make my phone and battery anymore. Now that I have one, I cannot imagine going back to my dinosaur days sans email/Internet/app access. I would probably be lost in another cab if I didn't have GPS on my phone.

The one regret I have with my iPhone is that I am now perpetually plugged in. I check and recheck my bag before I leave the house to make sure that my phone is with me. I have stopped taking the Metro paper from the friendly guy outside my subway stop because I'll be getting my news from Twitter. I research restaurants on Yelp for the weekend, check flight deals on my lunch break, and text and email while walking. I don't even use my digital camera anymore because I have the camera in my phone. And my phone charger is the first item on my packing list when I go away on a trip. Panic levels escalate if I don't have my phone.

These panic levels may have something to do with the fact that I feel perpetually overwhelmed by the amount of information at my disposal, and the added task that I have to sift and synthesize all of it.