How the pandemic affected the way we use technology
As our lives continue to play out online, it seems we may never go back to the old ways
At this time of year I usually take a peek into the future and try to see what tech will be making the headlines over the next 12 months. In 2020, though, things are different. Obviously, normal life has been put on hold, and only a fool would try to predict what comes next.
One thing we can say with some certainty, though – the pandemic has changed the way we use technology in our daily lives, and some patterns are here to stay.
So instead of predicting what might happen in 2021, this year we’ll do something different.
We’ll look back at 2020 and explore how technology saved us during lockdown…
Video calling
Las t December most people had never heard of Zoom, the thriving video conferencing business, that had been established eight years.
That month it hosted video calls for about 10m users – by the time April came around there were 300m users meeting up via Zoom’s video calling system, every month… and users have remained around the same level.
You’d be hard-pressed now to find anyone who hasn’t heard of Zoom.
All video conferencing systems – Microsoft Teams and Google Meet included – have seen a dramatic increase in traffic as businesses began to cope with travel bans and office closures. But it wasn’t just businesses, family and friends used it to see each other face to face, even if they could not be in the same room.
While no substitute for real human contact, of course, it’s quite hard to imagine what state we’d all be in if we hadn’t had access to this technology.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve even started having video calls with people I didn’t see in person before the pandemic. I can’t be alone in that.
Sales of tablets rose and software makers rushed to add video calling features to their apps – it took only until the end of April for Facebook to add video conferencing to its Messenger app, and while it hasn’t said how many people used it, the fact that it’s still there says it all.
As – fingers crossed – vaccines roll out across the globe and we can start to be close to our fellow humans again, there will be a drop off in the number of people video calling.
But a lot of people were forced into learning how to do it by necessity, and it’s now a part of our daily lives. It’s not going anywhere soon.
Wo rkforce management (wfm)
There are a lot of people who have not seen the inside of an office since mid-march… and most of them are in no rush at all to go back.
Slack, a communication tool for co-workers (which may have a lot to gain from widespread remote working), recently surveyed almost 5,000 workers about what they wanted to happen post-pandemic, and only 12 per cent wanted a return to what came before.
People don’t want to work from home all the time, though – around three-quarters of those surveyed were keen to see a balance between the two. Some remote days, some days in the office.
Almost half the nation’s employees spent some time working from home, and in some cases large businesses moved their entire operations to remote working overnight, with barely a ripple.
Naturally, technology is at the heart of this. It simply could not be done without the ubiquity of high-speed internet, and reliable software.
Of course, if you own a city centre sandwich shop, you might not feel so happy about all this working from home. But the phenomenon does offer an opportunity to reset and rebalance our economy away from large city centres and back into the wider community.
The workers have not disappeared, they’ve just moved, and they will still need their sandwiches.
There will most certainly be a few entrepreneurs out their planning to bring coffee shops and cafes to the sticks… before Starbucks beats them to it.
Online shopping
I have had more contact with my Amazon delivery driver and the man who brings my Sainsbury’s big shop every week than any other human, besides those I live with, over the last nine months. I suspect I am not alone.
It is now possible to get almost anything delivered to your door, sometimes within hours of pressing the button. Year on year there has been a 75% increase in spending online, and shopping bought via the internet now accounts for almost a third of all spending.
But who didn’t miss wandering around the nearest town or city centre, looking in the shops in the company of actual other people? Well, me actually – but I’m sure there are many who did.
But now that habit has been broken, and people who have never ordered anything online have been forced to do so and found it easy, astoundingly quick, and safer than they thought.
Without the army of packers and delivery drivers, lockdown would have been considerably more miserable and a whole lot less safe for many.
Obviously, when this nightmare is over, a lot of people will return to the high street for their shopping, but many will feel no need to do so.
Contactless payments
I can ’t remember the last time I went to a cashpoint to get real money. I can’t even remember the last time I had cash in my hand.
My wife went to the cashpoint and couldn’t remember her PIN.
Everything I have paid for in person since March has been done with my phone.
Now obviously, I’m usually an early adopter in these things, but even I was carrying around a wallet this time last year. I’ve no need for that anymore – every card I need is now stored in my phone. Of course, there’s no need for that just to use contactless payments – most debit and credit cards can now touch and go up to a limit of £45 (Apple Pay and Google Pay on mobile often have no limits). According to trade body UK Finance, in September 64% of debit card payments were contactless – a record high – and the total value of contactless transactions was up more than £1bn year on year to over £8bn. Cash is not going away soon, but that is certainly the direction of travel. And these habits, tapping your phone or card to pay, will not be broken by the end of the pandemic. They’re here to stay.
Switching off
One of the features of lockdown was a real desire to switch off from the constant stream of bad news coming from the outside world and reconnect with nature.
In other words, one of the ways the lockdown changed the way we use technology… was not to use it at all. Or at least to use it more selectively.
We were at home most of the time, as many of us still are, and when we did go out, it was for a walk. A walk with no purpose other than to be outside and find some freedom.
Not just freedom from our own four walls, but from the relentless buzz of 24-hour connectivity.
Government figures suggest almost 40% of people were walking more during the pandemic than before.
The vaccine is on the way to rescue us from our imprisonment, but when it does, it seems likely that those of us who’ve caught the walking bug will not be cured of that.