Social Media is making the world a much smaller place… Good or Bad?

The introduction of social media to not only the world of business, but to our own personal lives has really opened many new doors and allowed us to explore new areas and people that would never have presented themselves without it.
Yes, we can keep in contact with our close friends and family with Facebook, not needing to send a letter, make a call or even pop round to visit and say hello as their timelines inform us of how they are doing and their recent news. LinkedIn updates us on people’s work movements and achievements and tweets let us know that people are alive and kicking and such things as what shows on TV they are watching by the hashtags they are using… Simple really, have social media and you have an update on nearly everyone you know.

But, has social media made the world smaller or infact bigger? I always compare social media with business networking in that you enter a room / social media platform, you present yourself by what you wear and how you communicate / your profile and then you let everyone know what you do and how well you do it in hope they either buy in to what you offer or recommend you to their networks / your social media updates you share. The big difference between the two is that unless you attend business networking events attended by thousands or millions, you’ll never get the potential reach that social media offers and the speed of which it can share out your message.

I often think the world itself that we live, mostly looking at our lives here in England, has certainly got smaller. I’m sure that if you asked your elder friends and family just how far they explored their home area as children and places they saw (brings back memories of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five Series) that it would have been far wider than their children and if you actually look at how far you explored or the distance you allow your own children / younger members of family to go, then that area has greatly diminished further. From children allowed out all day to explore the whole town / village and countryside to children restricted to maybe just the pavements in front of their homes… I am sure that the pull / attraction of video gaming (Minecraft and similar) has also pulled children away from exploring the outside!

Looking at social media I think that for business it has possibly made the world much more easily accessible so made it smaller would you say? Certainly for purely social usage, it has made the world a smaller place. I have an event in France next week to attend and people from around the globe are attending who I have never met, but already we know so much about each other, what we look like, what we enjoy and what we are looking forward to doing that in fact the initial excitement of ‘meeting new people’ has lost it’s edge as we’ll already have that information stored in our minds so little to ask / explore – It will be straight on with business and delivering talks to the audiences we are there to speak to – It will be my first time talking to a large audience within the wine sector, I’ll have an excuse this time to have a glass of wine on the stage rather than water I’m hoping… Despite all that I have mentioned above, used correctly and a sensible mind with consideration for those you know, social media can be great for making the world a smaller and easier to reach place to live and do business.

Christopher Walkey

Founder of Estate Agent Networking. Internationally invited speaker on how to build online target audiences using Social Media. Writes about UK property prices, housing, politics and affordable homes.

You May Also Enjoy

Letting Agent Talk

Landlords and tenants advised to work together to get through extreme heatwaves

With some areas set to be hotter than Portugal this week, lettings and estate agents across the UK are issuing advice to protect properties ahead of extreme weather Prolonged periods of hot weather across the UK are placing additional pressure on homes, from overheating and poor ventilation to damage caused by extreme temperatures. Today, lettings…
Read More
Estate Agent Talk

Nearly half of UK home listings fail to sell

A London estate agent has warned that thousands of homeowners across the UK are pricing themselves out of the market by setting asking prices that no longer reflect what buyers are willing to pay. The warning comes after new analysis by Zoopla, covering more than two million property listings between 2023 and 2026, found that…
Read More
Rightmove logo
Breaking News

Lowest number of new build developments coming to market since 2017

New analysis from the UK’s largest property platform Rightmove reveals that the number of new build housing developments coming to market is at its lowest level since January 2017 The figures are despite the government’s target to build 1.5 million homes over the course of this parliament Higher mortgage rates continue to set a challenging…
Read More
Estate Agent Talk

What Every Estate Agent Should Tell Clients Before Moving Day

For most estate agents, the job is done once contracts are exchanged, completion takes place, and the keys are handed over. For your client, however, that’s when one of the biggest challenges begins. Moving day has the power to turn months of excitement into an incredibly stressful experience, or a smooth finish to what has…
Read More
Breaking News

Breaking Property News 9/7/26

Daily bite-sized proptech and property news in partnership with Proptech-X.   PropTech is evolving but WhatsApp is still winning the Property transaction battle A home-moving process that a decade of PropTech failed to fix   Thought leadership by Olivier Jauniaux Founder of NestLink There are a particular series of messages, somewhere in every property chain, that decides whether…
Read More
Breaking News

Heatwaves haven’t diminished love for south-facing gardens

The latest research from Yopa reveals that despite 81% of people saying they have been avoiding their garden during the recent heatwaves, south-facing gardens continue to be the preferred orientation of choice for UK homeowners, attracting house price premiums of over £20,000 on average. However, the insight from Yopa also suggests that should heatwaves become…
Read More