Continuously operating personal virtual mobilities: patterns and implications

Passive virtual personal mobility’ occurs continuously through incoming messages via e-mail or chat, whereas 'active virtual personal mobility' constitutes elective networking activity. This article explores the continuous nature of individuals' active virtual mobilities, focusing on the consequential changes in our everyday lives and their psychological, economic, spatial, personal, and social implications. The emergence of continuous virtual individual mobilities encompasses three phases: the Internet and emailing, smartphones, and social networking platforms. Continuous networking implies utilizing time as a form of network capital, thereby creating a competition between networking and other activities, such as leisure, work, and sleep. The most alarming time displacement pattern has been observed in sleep, potentially causing health and circadian issues for people of all ages. Social networking has been hailed for its numerous benefits, primarily facilitating friendship-making and empathy while promoting the globalization of social relationships, interest communities, and broader perspectives. Internet users have adopted free-of-charge networking worldwide, with a preference for specific platforms in several countries. Heavy use turns networking into a master of virtual personal mobility, as its extensive use brings about additional individual mobilities, both virtual and physical. Thus, exposure to advertisements may lead to increased online and physical shopping, and extended networking with some partners may necessitate face-to-face meetings with them. A network society differs from a networking society in that it focuses on physical and virtual flows occurring among cities and their inhabitants. The networking society is all about connectivity, with connected individuals serving as nodes regardless of their physical locations.