It’s funny how many people use the shorthand “social” instead of saying “social media.” After all, just about everything has a degree of “social” baked into it – for human beings are incredibly social from the get-go. Within just a few hours of birth, newborns try to imitate the facial gestures of the first people they meet—an early attempt to socially interact.
It doesn’t even begin at birth; our need for socialization actually begins before birth, if you can believe it. Humans have such a need to be social that we’re social even when we’re still inside our mothers’ wombs. Researchers recently used ultrasound to record the interactions of twins and found that the twosomes were reaching out for one another at 14 weeks of age. That means people have a propensity toward social action, which is already present before birth. “These findings force us to predate the emergence of social behavior,” says Umberto Castiello of the University of Padova, one of the researchers who led the study. “When the context enables it, as in the case of twin pregnancies, social movements, i.e., movements specifically aimed at another individual, are observed well before birth.”
When your company thinks about social media, do you think about platforms and technologies first – or, do you put your customers’ innate need for social interactions first?