This is not me, the Internet is my news and info source and a key for
access.
kelly
the New York Times
February 16, 2000
Portrait of a Newer, Lonelier Crowd Is Captured in an Internet Survey
By JOHN MARKOFF
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 15 -- The nation's obsession with the Internet
is causing many Americans to spend less time with friends and
family, less time shopping in stores and more time working at home after hours, according to one of the first large-scale surveys of
the societal impact of the Internet.
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In short, "the more hours people use the Internet, the less time
they spend with real human beings," said Norman Nie, a political
scientist at Stanford University who was the principal investigator
for the study.
Mr. Nie asserted that the Internet was creating a broad new wave of
social isolation in the United States, raising the specter of an
atomized world without human contact or emotion.
That conclusion is certain to prove controversial because some
online enthusiasts contend that the Internet has fostered
alternative electronic relationships that may replace or even
enhance face-to-face family and social connections.
"This is not a zero-sum game," said Howard Rheingold, author of
"Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier"
(Addison-Wesley, 1993). "People's social networks do not consist
only of people they see face to face. In fact, social networks have
been extending because of artificial media since the printing press
and the telephone."
The Stanford survey, which was conducted by the university's
Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society and will be
published on Wednesday, appears to offer an Internet-era parallel
to some of the findings of "The Lonely Crowd," a landmark
sociological analysis of American society in 1950.
The book, written by David Riesman with Nathan Glazer and Reuel
Denney, described the changing American character and chronicled
the shift away from family and community-centered life and the
ascendance of mass media.
The Stanford study, in turn, details how the Internet is leading to
a rapid shift away from mass media. The study reported that 60
percent of regular Internet users said they had reduced their
television viewing, and one-third said they spent less time reading
newspapers.
Those regular users, spending at least five hours a week online,
represented about 20 percent of those surveyed and were the group
looked at most closely. In all, the study found that 55 percent of
those polled had Internet access at home or work and that 43
percent of households were online.
And the study found evidence that the Internet was allowing the
workplace to invade the home. A quarter of regular Internet users
employed at least part time said the Internet had increased the
time they spent working at home without reducing the time spent at
work.
_________________________________________________________________
"No one is asking the obvious questions about what kind of world we
are going to live in"
_________________________________________________________________
In the past Mr. Nie has been the author of studies on the decline
of American involvement in political and community organizations.
He said that while much of the public Internet debate had been
focused on the invasion of privacy, little study had been done of
the potential psychological and emotional impact of what he said
would be more people "home, alone and anonymous."
Mr. Nie, a co-author of the study with Prof. Lutz Erbring of the
Free University of Berlin, contended that there was no evidence
that virtual communities would provide a substitute for traditional
human relationships.
"If I go home at 6:30 in the evening and spend the whole night
sending e-mail and wake up the next morning, I still haven't talked
to my wife or kids or friends," Mr. Nie said. "When you spend your
time on the Internet, you don't hear a human voice and you never
get a hug."
The new study was based on a sample of 4,113 adults in 2,689
households. It is the second major research project to suggest that
the advent of the Internet may have negative social consequences.
In August 1998 researchers at Carnegie Mellon University reported
that people who spent even a few hours a week connected to the
Internet experienced higher levels of depression and loneliness.
In contrast to the Carnegie Mellon study, which focused on
psychological and emotional issues, the Stanford survey is an
effort to provide a broad demographic picture of Internet use and
its potential impact on society.
"No one is asking the obvious questions about what kind of world we
are going to live in when the Internet becomes ubiquitous," Mr. Nie
said.
"No one asked these questions with the advent of the automobile,
which led to unplanned suburbanization, or with the rise of
television, which led to the decline of our political parties."
"We hope we can give society a chance to talk through some of these
issues before the changes take place," he said.
Americans overwhelmingly use e-mail as their most common Internet
activity, according to the Stanford researchers.
Moreover, the report found that most Internet users treated the
network as a giant public library, albeit with a commercial tilt.
Despite the general perception that the Internet has become a vast
cybernetic shopping mall, the Stanford study indicates that only 25
percent of the Internet users surveyed make purchases online and
that fewer than 10 percent do other types of financial transactions
online, like banking.
Some critics strongly disagree with the researchers' assertion that
the Internet is leading to a new form of social isolation.
"It's true by definition that if you're spending more hours hitting
the keyboard you're not spending time with other people," said
Amatai Etzioni, a sociologist at George Washington University. "But
people do form very strong relations over the Internet, and many of
them are relations that they could not find any other way."
Mr. Nie disagrees, arguing that today's patterns of Internet usage
foretell a loss of interpersonal contact that will result in the
kind of isolation seen among many elderly Americans.
"There are going to be millions of people with very minimal human
interaction," he said. "We're really in for some things that are
potentially great freedoms but frightening in terms of long-term
social interaction."
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