This was in today's new York Times on the front page.  Obviously this is
the first study on the subject.  However, I wonder how many in the study
had disabilities.  For us the Internet is a very helpful reading and
communications tool.

kelly




August 30, 1998

Researchers Find Sad, Lonely World in Cyberspace
By AMY HARMON

In the first concentrated study of the social and psychological effects of
Internet use at home, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have found
that people who spend even a few hours a week online experience higher
levels of depression and loneliness than they would have if they used the
computer network less frequently.

Those participants who were lonelier and more depressed at the start of the
two-year study, as determined by a standard questionnaire administered to
all the subjects, were not more likely to use the Internet. Instead,
Internet use itself appeared to cause a decline in psychological well-being,
the researchers said.

The results of the $1.5 million project ran completely contrary to
expectations of the social scientists who designed it and to many of the
organizations that financed the study. These included technology companies
like Intel Corp., Hewlett Packard, AT&T Research and Apple Computer, as well
as the National Science Foundation.

"We were shocked by the findings, because they are counterintuitive to what
we know about how socially the Internet is being used," said Robert Kraut, a
social psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon's Human Computer Interaction
Institute. "We are not talking here about the extremes. These were normal
adults and their families, and on average, for those who used the Internet
most, things got worse."

The Internet has been praised as superior to television and other "passive"
media because it allows users to choose the kind of information they want to
receive, and often, to respond actively to it in the form of e-mail
exchanges with other users, chat rooms or electronic bulletin board
postings.

Research on the effects of watching television indicates that it tends to
reduce social involvement. But the new study, titled "HomeNet," suggests
that the interactive medium may be no more socially healthy than older mass
media. It also raises troubling questions about the nature of "virtual"
communication and the disembodied relationships that are often formed in the
vacuum of cyberspace.

Participants in the study used inherently social features like e-mail and
Internet chat more than they used passive information gathering like reading
or watching videos. But they reported a decline in interaction with family
members and a reduction in their circles of friends that directly
corresponded to the amount of time they spent online.

At the beginning and end of the two-year study, the subjects were asked to
agree or disagree with statements like "I felt everything I did was an
effort," and "I enjoyed life" and "I can find companionship when I want it."
They were also asked to estimate how many minutes each day they spent with
each member of their family and to quantify their social circle. Many of
these are standard questions in tests used to determine psychological
health.

For the duration of the study, the subjects' use of the Internet was
recorded. For the purposes of this study, depression and loneliness were
measured independently, and each subject was rated on a subjective scale. In
measuring depression, the responses were plotted on a scale of 0 to 3, with
0 being the least depressed and 3 being the most depressed. Loneliness was
plotted on a scale of 1 to 5.

By the end of the study, the researchers found that one hour a week on the
Internet led, on average, to an increase of .03, or 1 percent, on the
depression scale, a loss of 2.7 members of the subject's social circle,
which averaged 66 people, and an increase of .02, or four-tenths of 1
percent, on the loneliness scale.

The subjects exhibited wide variations in all three measured effects, and
while the net effects were not large, they were statistically significant in
demonstrating deterioration of social and psychological life, Kraut said.



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Related Article
Study Says 70 Million American Adults Use the Internet
(Aug. 26)
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 Based on these data, the researchers hypothesize that relationships
maintained over long distances without face-to-face contact ultimately do
not provide the kind of support and reciprocity that typically contribute to
a sense of psychological security and happiness, like being available to
baby-sit in a pinch for a friend, or to grab a cup of coffee.

"Our hypothesis is there are more cases where you're building shallow
relationships, leading to an overall decline in feeling of connection to
other people," Kraut said.

The study tracked the behavior of 169 participants in the Pittsburgh area
who were selected from four schools and community groups. Half the group was
measured through two years of Internet use, and the other half for one year.
The findings will be published this week by The American Psychologist, the
peer-reviewed monthly journal of the American Psychological Association.

Because the study participants were not randomly selected, it is unclear how
the findings apply to the general population. It is also conceivable that
some unmeasured factor caused simultaneous increases in use of the Internet
and decline in normal levels of social involvement. Moreover, the effect of
Internet use varied depending on an individual's life patterns and type of
use. Researchers said that people who were isolated because of their
geography or work shifts might have benefited socially from Internet use.

Even so, several social scientists familiar with the study vouched for its
credibility and predicted that the findings would probably touch off a
national debate over how public policy on the Internet should evolve and how
the technology itself might be shaped to yield more beneficial effects.

"They did an extremely careful scientific study, and it's not a result
that's easily ignored," said Tora Bikson, a senior scientist at Rand, the
research institution. Based in part on previous studies that focused on how
local communities like Santa Monica, Calif., used computer networks to
enhance civic participation, Rand has recommended that the federal
government provide e-mail access to all Americans.

"It's not clear what the underlying psychological explanation is," Ms.
Bikson said of the study. "Is it because people give up day-to-day contact
and then find themselves depressed? Or are they exposed to the broader world
of Internet and then wonder, 'What am I doing here in Pittsburgh?' Maybe
your comparison standard changes. I'd like to see this replicated on a
larger scale. Then I'd really worry."


Christine Riley, a psychologist at Intel Corp., the giant chip manufacturer
that was among the sponsors of the study, said she was surprised by the
results but did not consider the research definitive.

"For us, the point is there was really no information on this before," Ms.
Riley said. "But it's important to remember this is not about the
technology, per se; it's about how it is used. It really points to the need
for considering social factors in terms of how you design applications and
services for technology."

The Carnegie Mellon team -- which included Sara Kiesler, a social
psychologist who helped pioneer the study of human interaction over computer
networks; Tridas Mukophadhyay, a professor at the graduate business school
who has examined computer mediated communication in the workplace; and
William Scherlis, a research scientist in computer science -- stressed that
the negative effects of Internet use that they found were not inevitable.

For example, the main focus of Internet use in schools has been gathering
information and getting in touch with people from far-away places. But the
research suggests that maintaining social ties with people in close physical
proximity could be more psychologically healthy.

"More intense development and deployment of services that support
pre-existing communities and strong relationships should be encouraged," the
researchers write in their forthcoming article. "Government efforts to wire
the nation's schools, for example, should consider online homework sessions
for students rather than just online reference works."

At a time when Internet use is expanding rapidly -- nearly 70 million adult
Americans are on line, according to Nielsen Media Research -- social critics
say the technology could exacerbate the fragmentation of U.S. society or
help to fuse it, depending on how it is used.

"There are two things the Internet can turn out to be, and we don't know yet
which it's going to be," said Robert Putnam, a political scientist at
Harvard University whose forthcoming book, "Bowling Alone," which is to be
published next year by Simon & Schuster, chronicles the alienation of
Americans from each other since the 1960s. "The fact that I'm able to
communicate daily with my collaborators in Germany and Japan makes me more
efficient, but there are a lot of things it can't do, like bring me chicken
soup."

Putnam added, "The question is how can you push computer mediated
communication in a direction that would make it more community friendly."

Perhaps paradoxically, several participants in the Internet study expressed
surprise when they were informed of the study's conclusions by a reporter.

"For me it's been the opposite of depression; it's been a way of being
connected," said Rabbi Alvin Berkun, who used the Internet for a few hours a
week to read The Jerusalem Post and communicate with other rabbis across the
country.

But Berkun said his wife did not share his enthusiasm for the medium. "She
does sometimes resent when I go and hook up," he said, adding after a pause,
"I guess I am away from where my family is while I'm on the computer."
Another possibility is that the natural human preference for face-to-face
communication may provide a self-correcting mechanism to the technology that
tries to cross it.

The rabbi's daughter, Rebecca, 17, said she had spent a fair amount of time
in teen-age chat rooms at the beginning of the survey in 1995.

"I can see how people would get depressed," Ms. Berkun said. "When we first
got it, I would be on for an hour a day or more. But I found it was the same
type of people, the same type of things being said. It got kind of old."




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