by Marty Predd, Research Associate, Brand Amplitude, LLC

I hate feeling like a conspiracy theorist, but that’s exactly how I felt leaving the theater after seeing the movie, Food, Inc., last night.

Really? Our government subsidizes corn to the point where it sells for less than the cost of production? Corn and corn derivatives are in a vast majority of the foods available at the grocery store, including the cheapest and most unhealthy ones? Less than 10 major corporations control the vast majority of food production in this country, with less government oversight than ever? Really????

Questions like these went on and on through my head last night, reading like a bad script from an AM radio late-night talk show. As much as I hated to admit it, Food, Inc. had changed me in a big way. Having slept on it, I’ve come to a conclusion considerably bigger than the movie or the specific topic at hand. Call it a Millennial thing or call it a Marty thing, but embracing the local — local products, local businesses, local relationships — is making more sense to me than ever.

I blame a recent post on this blog (“Will Millennials be the First to Let Go of Technology?”) for contributing in part to these feelings. One of the great ironies of the ever-advancing, ever-more-connected technological world we live in is the growing detachment I feel from the physical community in which I live and work. Via Facebook, instant messaging, and Twitter, I’m much ‘closer’ to friends (and some strangers) thousands of miles away than I am to the nice couple who lives across the hall from me.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Besides maybe a conspiracy theorist, who would argue that it’s not a wonderful thing to keep in touch with old friends across the world and forge new relationships with strangers who share my interests? After all, it was this level of connectedness that allowed me to move across the country to Portland, OR without feeling like I was truly leaving my good friends from my Midwestern childhood. That’s pretty remarkable.

But here’s the trouble as I see it: As the first generation to have grown up in this world of virtual connectedness, technologies like instant messaging, Facebook and Twitter represent something much different to us Millennials than they do to our parents: For us, they are not merely added conveniences for keeping in touch with old friends, they’ve become the very mechanisms we use to forge and maintain new relationships. For me and I suspect many of my cohorts, this leads to a growing need to be ‘plugged in’ to feel socialized and happy.

And the more detached I become from the people living in my physical world, the easier it becomes to neglect the fairly obvious (and important) questions that our pioneer ancestors must have asked themselves daily: Where’s our food coming from today? How are the neighbors? Is everyone we know safe and healthy? You know, the sort of basic questions that lead to cohesive, socialized and happy communities, independent of the fiber optic cabling running through them.

Before you roll your eyes, let me reassure you: I don’t plan on ‘unplugging’ anytime soon, and I remain as eager as ever to buy the next iPhone or sign up for the next Twitter, and I’m instant messaging my friends as I write this. But starting today, I plan on making a concerted, if unnaturally deliberate effort to engage in the physical community that surrounds me: to support local service businesses, to buy groceries at the farmers market instead of the superstore, to say hi to the neighbors on the way out to dinner (or God forbid even invite them to join us)….generally, to give a damn about the community of people immediately surrounding me.

If this longing to rediscover the local represents a trend bigger than me (and I suspect it does), it stands to have dramatic implications for the work of Millennial marketers in the years to come.