Sofalising
Sofalising or sofalizing is a slang term coined to describe people socialising with family and friends online via social networks, usually while lounging on a sofa, rather than meeting up in person. It came to prominence via Schott's Vocabin the New York Times.
The term was coined by the online social casino games company Yazino, to describe the trend for its users to interact with each other while playing games. Its researchamongst 2,000+ Brits found that 26% of people spend more time socialising online that in real life, while 10% of users claimed that they are more like to stay in at the weekend to meet friends and family online, that go out and meet them personally. A number of ‘sofalisers’ are said to take it to the extreme, with 3% of British adults spending more than 25 hours each week engaging with friends online.
In an article about Sofalising in the Sunday Times, Dr , a cognitive neurophysiologist said, “We have 168 hours available to us each week, but we have 368 hours’ worth of things we must do, need to do, want to do and think we ought to do. This is a way of shortcutting what is the time-consuming process of going out and meeting people.”
Columnist Janet Street-Porter commented about sofalising, "Sadly, the new generation of people under 40, who increasingly sit at home sofalising online, are storing up real problems for themselves in the future, becoming increasingly isolated."
The Yazino study cites 11 different ways to connect with friends and family each day: email, text, instant messenger, Twitter, Skype, online gambling sites, live chat, social gaming, and messaging, wall posts or status updates on a social network such as Facebook or Bebo.
The phenomenon of sofalising has been picked up by the BBC Newsnight. They’ve discovered that more and more of their regular audience sitting at home watching the programme on TV are discussing what they are watching on another screen with their friends (or strangers) on social media sites and introduced a Twitter hashtag #newsnight that helps them monitor the discussions on Twitter in real time. They've consulted the finding of Thinkbox study that explored the complementary relationship between TV and social media.
The term was coined by the online social casino games company Yazino, to describe the trend for its users to interact with each other while playing games. Its researchamongst 2,000+ Brits found that 26% of people spend more time socialising online that in real life, while 10% of users claimed that they are more like to stay in at the weekend to meet friends and family online, that go out and meet them personally. A number of ‘sofalisers’ are said to take it to the extreme, with 3% of British adults spending more than 25 hours each week engaging with friends online.
In an article about Sofalising in the Sunday Times, Dr , a cognitive neurophysiologist said, “We have 168 hours available to us each week, but we have 368 hours’ worth of things we must do, need to do, want to do and think we ought to do. This is a way of shortcutting what is the time-consuming process of going out and meeting people.”
Columnist Janet Street-Porter commented about sofalising, "Sadly, the new generation of people under 40, who increasingly sit at home sofalising online, are storing up real problems for themselves in the future, becoming increasingly isolated."
The Yazino study cites 11 different ways to connect with friends and family each day: email, text, instant messenger, Twitter, Skype, online gambling sites, live chat, social gaming, and messaging, wall posts or status updates on a social network such as Facebook or Bebo.
The phenomenon of sofalising has been picked up by the BBC Newsnight. They’ve discovered that more and more of their regular audience sitting at home watching the programme on TV are discussing what they are watching on another screen with their friends (or strangers) on social media sites and introduced a Twitter hashtag #newsnight that helps them monitor the discussions on Twitter in real time. They've consulted the finding of Thinkbox study that explored the complementary relationship between TV and social media.
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