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Has Social Media Made the Holidays Easier, or Harder?

As we get into the Christmas home stretch, I wanted to pause and ask a question (not surprisingly, it’s the question that headlines this entry):

Have social media and online community tools made holiday preparations easier, or harder?

My own guess going into this topic is that the effect has been pretty much neutral — a wash — because social media and online tools help you manage your relationships with the people you know, saving time, but also expands the circle of people you know, causing more holiday obligations, which eats up that time.

This is not exactly a new supposition. It’s kind of how, despite all the labor-saving household devices we have, people still spend about the same amount of time doing housework. (Either it’s because the most time-consuming things don’t have easy shortcuts — though maybe the Roomba robot mops have changed that side of the equation — or people end up being held to a higher standard of cleanliness, so they have to do more work.)

Anyway, here are a few categories of holiday prep where online and social media tools come into play:

Gift-Giving: Clearly, online shopping is a big convenience, especially when you’re giving to distant friends and family. On the plus side, that’s fewer trips to the post office, though you sacrifice some of the personal touch (those personalized gift messages ain’t all that personalized). And with user wishlists, it’s easy to see what people actually want (although it might seem a bit… mercenary).

On the cost side, being involved in online communities means you’re exposed to more wishlists, more giving circles, more Secret Santa gift exchanges — in general, more people to shop for. Still, the convenience of e-commerce makes it a big time-saver, overall.

Holiday Cards: Electronic greeting cards have been around a long time now, but they just lack that special something that you get when you hold a real, paper card in your hands. So, despite efforts by some to modernize the process (see this story about what happens when a Dad gets put in charge of Christmas — results are… mixed) — you’re probably still be sending out paper holiday cards.

Plus, it’s pretty common in online communities to see holiday card exchanges — the one time of year that people separated by distance come together through the mail. (There’s that whole “expanded circle of friends” thing again.)

Of course, technology has helped a little bit — plenty of photo services let you make your own personalized holiday greeting photo cards. But you still have to add a pithy note and send them out.

Holiday Events and Parties: No doubt that that online event-planning tools help manage the whole invitations and RSVP process. Again, though, being involved in more communities increases your number of potential obligations. This is generally not a bad thing, and it’s up to you to exercise restraint to avoid getting overcommitted (you can’t blame the Internet for an inability to say “Sorry, I’d love to, but I can’t.”) Call it a wash.

The Family Holiday Newsletter: Do people still do this — send out a summary of the year’s events with their end-of-year holiday card? In a world of blogs, photo sharing, status updates, digital intimacy, and continuous partial attention, a year-end wrapup seems a little dated. Plus, who wants to read 2 pages of single-spaced, carefully-vetted family “highlights”, anyway?

Maybe you can just do a year-end blog entry. You could give the URL in your holiday card, right? And, it’ll give you a chance to link to your blog highlights.

After an exhaustive crunching of the numbers, the way I see it, social media, online community, and other Internet tools pretty much run as a wash when it comes to saving holiday prep time. But, after all, the holidays aren’t about efficiency — they’re about family, friends, and slavish devotion to labor-intensive rituals. So enjoy! (And hurry up with sending those cards, you’re running out of time.)

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