Brave New World?

​While my last novel, The Worth of Water, is in its final stages of being massaged into shape, I’ve started to think about some ideas for my next story.  I have the bones of an idea and some things I would like to explore so decided to do a bit of reading to see if I could understand some of these concepts a bit better.  During the course of this reading I came across this “alteration” to the well-known Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:

​This really made me laugh at first.  The thought that something which didn’t even exist when Maslow proposed his theory in 1943 becoming more important than the most basic of human needs seems crazy.  But anecdotal evidence indicates that many people would rather have WiFi than eat on a plane.  Some people put WiFi access ahead of seeing family and friends.  And, in a recent survey taken here in my home town of Auckland, 48% of respondents would rather WiFi be restored before water supply in the event of a natural disaster!
 
How life has changed.  On our local news the other night one reporter discussed how much time is now devoted to social media.  According to the report the average person now spends an hour a day on social media platforms, with estimates that this amount of time rises to about three hours per day for young people.
 
What did we all used to do with this time?  What are we missing out on?  And how did something so new to our existence come to mean so much so fast?  Let me know what you think!