• Other Studies

Overview:

Six researchers at Carnegie Mellon set out to discover the role of the internet in the formation of social circles and rates of depression and loneliness. This was done in order to answer the debate as to whether or not the internet functions as largely a positive or negative social influence. The question was, in other words, Do people use the internet to augment their social networks and "to communicate and socialize with colleagues, friends, and family through electronic mail and to join social groups through distribution lists, newsgroups, and MUDs," or do they use the internet to sink into a more isolated state of being?

Hypotheses:

1. The internet is like television insofar as people use it for entertainment, information, and commerce.
   
   • Although there are some studies that seem to show an increase in social involvement as a result of the introduction of television into a culture, most chart a decline in civic engagement resulting from increased television viewing. This is likely the result of two factors: first, time spent watching TV is time spent not doing social things.
     
   • TV watching is an inherently isolating action. Lonely people watch TV more than others do.
   
   
2. The internet is actually a social connector because people use things like e-mail and newsgroups in order to connect with members of their communities. In this sense, it is like the telephone.
   
   • People use the internet dominantly for interpersonal communication, whether through e-mail, MUD's, newsgroups, chat rooms, etc. The dilemma arises when one considers that the new bonds that are generally created through this interpersonal communication are weaker than those created through face-to-face contact with others, and hence offer less emotional support. It is unclear whether the internet will undercut relationships or become a positive force in their creation (empirical evidence here is sparse).
     
   • The internet relieves people of the geographic, health-related, and schedule-related constraints on communication.

Criticisms of past research:

Kate and Aspden's 1997 study found no evidence for an anti-social internet, noting no decline in "memberships in religious, leisure, and community organizations or in the amount of time users and nonusers reported spending communicating with family and friends." Their data may have been inaccurate due to their use of fallable self-reporting methods to determine internet usage. Their data also does not speak in any way as to the character of the relationships people form on-line; for example, whether these relationships are weaker or more stable than those formed before.

The Study:

The researchers selected 93 families from several different areas of Pittsburgh. These families were given a free computer, telephone line, and unlimited access to the internet in exchange for interviews and general data. They measured World Wide Web use and the frequency of e-mail access by individuals. They simultaneously measured family communication, the size of local social network, the size of distant social networks, and social support in order to chart the social involvement of the participants. The UCLA Loneliness Scale, the Kanner, Coyne, Schaefer, and Lazarus' (1981) Hassles Scales, and the Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale were used to measure the participants' psychological well-being.

The Findings:

1. Greater use of the Internet was associated with subsequent declines in family communication.
   
2. Greater social extroversion and having a larger local social circle predicted less use of the Internet for the next 12 or 24 months.
   
3. The number of people in individuals' social networks did not decline significantly, although it is unclear whether people had more or less face-to-face contact after their introduction to the internet.
   
4. Controlling for these personal characteristics (men v. women, minorities v. whites, and richer v. poorer households) and initial loneliness, people who used the Internet more reported larger increases in loneliness.
   
5. Although use of the Internet may increase aggregate stress, it does not do so in the same way for everybody (stressor scale).
   
6. Greater use of the Internet was linked with increased depression for a subsequent period. This was exhibited even if initial depression levels and demographic, stress, and support variables often associated with depression were held constant.

Proposed reasons for these findings:

• Loss of strong ties with social interactors
  
• Displacement of social activities

Proposed policy changes:

Although most internet policy has concerned the commercial purposes of the net, there is no reason why comparable effort could not be exerted to facilitate the internet as a social medium, including making it easier to find people on-line. Improved search engines and more comprehensive on-line listings might make it easier for individuals to discuss topics not as narrowly defined as those covered in newsgroups, in order to create stronger social ties. Developing and deploying services that support preexisting communities and strong relationships (for example, bringing schools online) would facilitate social health.

It is not clear whether internet activities inherently build weaker social bonds, or whether the current internet utilities available to the public are not adequate to sustain strong ones. We should proceed to optimize the social value of the internet in either case. "Connection latencies," or the time it takes for an internet connection to be established per use, make repeated connections undesirable; users therefore tend to use the internet for protracted periods of time, rather than dipping into usage for specific reasons. Eliminating these lag periods might change usage patterns. Additionally, making the computer itself a more social machine - one that more than one individual at a given place can use at a time - might facilitate more meaningful internet usage.

Notes:

• Since it is difficult to measure the opportunity costs involved in "giving up" internet use, this study focused on establishing relationships between heavy versus light internet usage and depression, lonliness, and social isolation.
  
• The study measured real, empirical data, and did not poll users for self-evaluations regarding time spent on the internet.
  
• Questions Homenet seeks to answer in the future: "Do negative effects continue or do they dissipate as people get less enamored of the Internet? Are the effects we found the same for different kinds of people and different samples? Are the effects better or worse than the effects of television? Is there a tradeoff of positive educational effects or skill for negative social effects?" (Sara Kiesler, CMU professor, in an interview)

Stanford Study

Methodology:

Two Stanford professors used the resources of a company called InterSurvey, which Norman H. Nie, one of the researchers, founded. InterSurvey gives families and individuals free access to the internet via Wed TV in exchange for their participation in surveys and marketing of all kinds.

Findings:

• People spend more hours on the Internet the more years they have been using it.
  
• A quarter of the respondents who use the Internet regularly (more than five hours a week) feel that it has reduced their time with friends and family, or attending events outside the home.
  
• A quarter of regular Internet users who are employed say the Internet has increased the time they spend working at home without cutting back at the office.
  
• Sixty percent of regular Internet users say the Internet has reduced their TV viewing, and one-third say they spend less time reading newspapers.
  
• The least educated and the oldest Americans are least likely to have Internet access, but when they do use the Internet, their use is similar to others' use.

Observations/Quotes from Norman Nie:

• E-mail is a way to stay in touch, but you can't share a coffee or a beer with somebody on e-mail or give them a hug.
  
• The Internet could be the ultimate isolating technology that further reduces our participation in communities even more than television did before it
  
• When we lived in small communities, the old story was that you said to yourself, 'I'll see this guy and his wife at church on Sunday, so I better be honest with him today.' Then we moved to the big anonymous cities and it became, 'Hell, I'll hardly ever see this guy.' Now, it's becoming, 'Hell, I won't ever even know this guy's name.'
  
• We need to do a more conscious job of examining the unintended and potentially negative consequences of constructing our new electronic system for information and commerce in this century than we did in building its physical counterpart of streets and highways in the last century.