How social media and marketing could change human evolution

Social media and social advertising have been making unprecedented gains in the consumer marketplace over the past few years, helped largely by a better understanding by marketers of the human psyche. Social media and advertising through social media have found dramatic new ways to hook into the deepest parts of our brains to influence consumer behavior, whether it's checking twitter every two minutes or playing Mafia Wars incessantly. Not since the invention of the scratch-off lotto ticket have we been so manipulated by marketers who have found our "addiction" buttons and are pressing them constantly.

Those who respond to the siren's call of social media and social advertising find themselves spending multiple hours every day locked into social media platforms. The question of whether this is a good thing is not something I will attempt to answer here, but what is inevitably happening is that those with a greater propensity for addictive behavior are being drawn into social media like never before. These peoples' lives are being inexorably changed simply due to the fact that social media is so amazingly persuasive habit-forming and can devour hours per day.

There are already distinct societal lines being created around those who are connected to social media and the those who either have not been introduced to it or who have purposefully turned away from it. Depending on the big-picture impact (positive or negative) of social media on society, we could see people with a predisposition for using/abusing social media change the daily structure of their lives in such a way that it could affect their social circles and even mating.

Is social media and advertising on the edge of influencing the foundations of society, and even the evolution of humanity?

perception of value through "exclusive" services

I am a USAA member (a service offered only to members of the armed services or passed down to offspring of members of armed services..I am the latter).

USAA offers a variety of different services by sponsors. For example: discount car rentals. USAA members get a good discount on car rentals from several agencies, so one would think of it as a good value. However, our perception of high value can get in the way of clear judgment. For example, It would be approximately $400 for a 5-day car rental near Newark Airport in New Jersey with the USAA discount. This is a sizeable chunk of money. However, a nearby car rental agency called Rent A Wreck (an ominous-sounding name, but they refurbish slightly older cars and rent them for cheap) rents cars for the same period of time for $150. So, a different deal ends up being a better value, even though the USAA deal was much more of a mental attraction ("a deal? just for me? what a great value!).

The moral to the story in my opinion is not to cloud your mind with advertising from any company, and always keep your mind clear when looking at such offers. It may just be that you're not being sold on the value so much as the mental ego-boost of knowing you're in an exclusive club of savers.