Though hugely popular with the younger generation, social networking keeps us from being in the moment, Howard Bragman says.

Bragman: I think where social networking, we’ve only seen the tip of it. I think it’s going to be so mega-huge and in terms of marketing. When I deal with celebrities now, probably half of what I deal with is their media image, their appearance. The other half is websites and web chats and their Facebook and their Twitters and things like that, because that’s how younger people communicate. I agree with you, I’m not that interested that Tammy is having coffee or running to the drugstore because she has a rash on her arm. It’s not that interesting to me, but it sure seems interesting to a lot of younger people out there. You know, I’ll be at a party and I’ll see a young person in the corner, and I saw with my nephew, my nephew was at a party and he’s in his 20s, and everybody’s talking and socializing, having a drink and having a good time, and he was texting. I’m like, “Excuse me, come into the present tense,” but that was his present tense. And if you have kids and there’s a little boy and a little girl in a sandbox and the girl is playing with her doll and the boy friend is playing with his dump truck, but they’re ignoring each other, we call that ‘parallel play.’ We’re seeing a lot of parallel play in our society right now. We’re seeing that people can be at one place and twittering their friends that “Oh, I’m at this party. There’s this hot chick. The food is not very good. Where do you want to meet afterwards?” As opposed to being in the moment, and I’m afraid being in the moment can be lost.