How social media are changing community and identity

We're now not far away from the advent of fully haptic virtual reality screens and personalised holographic projection units. Yet I think we'll still feel that cyber-calling is in some way inferior to a physical interaction.

As it is, some of us find that the online experience actually increases feelings of isolation. Though well connected in the cyber world, some people feel alone in the midst of the real-time urban crowd. Their sense of isolation is exacerbated by the fact that the very act of engaging online reminds them of how many people they could know, but don't.

Overall, there is evidence to suggest that while social media may widen our range of potential relationships, they're not quite so helpful in terms of deepening relationships once we're in them. They are useful for maintaining already robust connections, or for initiating the early stages of relationships, but not so good for building really deeply rooted relationships from the ground up.

If we rely too heavily on social media to provide a sense of identity and community, our range of relationships is likely to become broad but shallow.

Studies in industry have shown that digital communications tend to be more effective and beneficial when they're an adjunct to - not a replacement for - something more personal.

For example, one study looked at thousands of emails sent between co-workers in a large British firm. It revealed that a high percentage of those emails were sent to people working on the same floor, or even within the same office space.

This and similar research suggests that sharing ideas, projects and even values is an inherently social thing - and, to some degree, we need physical proximity to pull it off.

The way we build a sense of community may be changing, as the BBC IPSOS Mori poll suggests. In an age of arms-length community-building we may find that declaring our views and outlook become ever more important in describing ourselves to others.

I strongly suspect that a growing engagement with social media and other technologies will actually increase our need for physical community.

Whether they negate our need for a sense of nationhood, because of a growing awareness of our global citizenship, remains to be seen.

However, this much is very clear: how we define ourselves for the world around us is changing. We will need to be discerning when it comes to reducing our reliance on face-time in favour of Facebook.