Three Convenient Mobile Habits to Keep from the Pandemic

Pandemic Mobile Habits

COVID-19 took the world by storm and completely upended day-to-day life. Everything we were accustomed to doing changed and simple daily habits were altered to comply with the new norms. As these changes occurred, humans began adapting to the new circumstances and an increased reliance on technology arrived. While we all agree that COVID-19 is a terrible thing, there are certainly good mobile habits that developed from the pandemic that should stay in our everyday lives in the future.

Zoom is Here to Stay

I’ll be honest, I think we all absolutely hated Zoom calls/meetings at the beginning of the pandemic. It seemed like every minute we were hopping off of one Zoom and then onto the next one. While Zoom meetings can be frustrating at times, they are clearly not going anywhere, and nor should they in most circumstances. Why spend all day sitting in an office when work can be done from home and meetings be done through Zoom?

It is a more convenient and much simpler way to conduct meetings when face-to-face interaction is not feasible or desired. Not only is convenient, but the app is surprisingly simple and easy to use on mobile devices.

As Nahai points out in Webs of Influence, “the more comfortable, easy, and enjoyable it is for people to use your website, the more satisfied they will be” (81). This rings true for Zoom because of its easy-to-learn layout and sleek design made for the convenience of consumers.

For example, if you officiate basketball and are required to go to a rules interpretation meeting every week, but the meeting site is 45 minutes away, would you rather waste the gas and drive there? Or lay in bed with your camera off to get meeting credit? Most people, myself included, would take the latter 99 times out of 100. People want convenience and zoom gives them that.

The increase in Zoom usage cannot be understated. Below, you can see just how rapidly Zoom’s usage grew. Obviously, those numbers cant be sustained as the majority of the U.S. returns to in-person normalcy, but still, the increase is shocking.

Daily Zoom users has increased ten-fold since the pandemic’s onset.

Youth Athletics Live Streams

In the pre-pandemic world, you could not find live streams of youth athletic events. However, when athletics started back up, schools, at least in Pennsylvania, were not allowed to have fans at events because of capacity restrictions. Schools got creative and started live streaming all athletic events on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other streaming platforms. They utilized Hudl focus cameras to provide viewers with all the game action they could not see in person right on their mobile devices.

Almost two years later, most schools are continuing to stream athletic events on the internet for fans, parents, grandparents, or anyone to watch.

Some schools, like Baldwin High School, have expanded their live streams into a full-fledged sports network (Fighting Highlanders Sports Network) with play-by-play and color commentary for basketball and football games.

Again, humans adapted to the circumstances and provided fans with a chance to view their favorite teams. These streams are good not just in pandemic times, but under normal circumstances as well because sometimes a parent just can’t make it to their son or daughter’s game in person. In the past, they would miss the game and not see any of the action. Now, just by going on YouTube or Facebook, a parent can watch their kid’s game.

Mobile Grocery Ordering

Let’s say the year is 2018 and all three of your kids have sporting events they need to be at over the weekend. As a parent, you and your spouse spend the entire weekend taking each of your kids to their events. By Sunday night you realize you didn’t have any time to do your weekly grocery shopping. What do you do? Well, it’s 2018, at some point during your hectic work week you have to set aside at least an hour to go grocery shopping.

Now let’s take the same example but change the year to 2020. What do you do? Simple, you go to www.instacart.com, order the groceries you want from the store of your choice, and someone will deliver them to your home. How convenient was that?!?!?!

Online grocery shopping has skyrocketed since the onset of the pandemic. From the beginning of 2020 to July 2020, order volume grew by more than 500%. Yup, 500% in the span of almost half a year. Sure, this number is certainly inflated by the beginning of the pandemic, but as of March 2021—a year after COVID began—Instacart’s market valuation grew from ~$8 billion a year earlier to $39 billion.

From the beginning of 2020 to July 2020, order volume grew by more than 500%.

People want convenience and with mobile grocery ordering, people have it and will continue to take advantage of it in the future.

Takeaways

Yes, being in a pandemic sucks. However, there are always positives, even from tremendous negatives. Mobile habits like Zoom, athletic streaming, and grocery orders were once barely, if at all, thought about in everyday life. All it took was a global pandemic to bring these common-sense changes to the world, and they should stay in our lives in the future.