Browsing Alone

Do media/entertainment technologies connect or disconnect people? That Americans have become increasingly disconnected from one another and the social capital that binds people since the rise of TV and the Net is an idea much debated since Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community two years ago (the book is now out in paperback). The Net -- ironically the world' s most connective medium -- could be radically advancing that trend. Putnam cites numerous surveys that show that interaction with family, friends, and neighbors, and participation in social activities -- from joining civic groups and bowling leagues to voting -- has declined as Americans find more reasons to stay at home. Online, fragmentation abounds. People turn increasingly inward. The big open spaces of the Net have either been corporatized, flamed to death or shut down, and communications steadily turned to exclusive p2p "me media," the fragmented, often self-censored, personalized and specialized weblogs, IM programs and mailing lists that dominate much of online communications.

In his book, Putnam argues that our access to the "social capital" that is the payoff for community and civic work is shrinking. Though the reasons are complex, technology and mass media are primary factors, Putnam says. We spend more time at home watching TV (and, increasingly, working and amusing ourselves online) and less with other people. Our detachment from communal efforts -- and opportunities to meet other people -- grows. In l960, 62.8 percent of voting-age Americans went to the polls to choose between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon; in l996, after decades of slippage, just 48.9 percent chose Bill Clinton over Bob Dole. The inverse correlation between the rise of screen-driven entertainment technologies and civic disconnection is persuasive. So is the epidemic hostility online.

Although Putnam's book focuses on TV more than the Net (since TV is older and its use has been more widely studied), it's impossible not to think about the new ways networked computing may contribute to this disconnection. The Net is the world's greatest communications medium, but the notion of cyberspace as providing a social connection -- remember the virtual community? -- has turned out to be a fantasy. In many ways, the intensely connective Net is helping people become more disconnected all the time. It's the new TV.

This is of no small consequence, Putnam argues. Social bounds are the most powerful predictor of life satisfaction. Communities with low social capital have poor schools, more teen pregnancies and child or youth suicide, and higher prental mortality. Social capital is also the most reliable indicator of crime rates and other measurable quality-of-life issues. Such disconnection has happened before in American life, Putnam writes, especially during periods of great migration and immigration, but it was reversed by periods of stability and the rise of organizations like the Red Cross, the Boy Scouts, and thriving religious organizations.

Of all the many dimensions along which forms of social capital vary, writes Putnam, perhaps the most important is the distinction between "bridging" (or inclusive) and "bonding" (or exclusive). Some forms of social capital are, by choice or necessity, he writes, inward looking and tend to reinforce exclusive identities and homogeneous groups -- fraternal organizations, church-based women's reading groups, snooty country clubs. Other networks are outward looking and encompass people across diverse and different social networks -- youth service groups, civil rights organizations, ecumenical religious associations.

The Net, it was originally believed, would be a "bridging" technology, one that would connect the planet. But the most interesting evolution in software in recent years has been code that permits people to narrow, not expand, their universes. Blocking and filtering software has become epidemic to product against flamers, crackers and spammers. The explosion in weblogs, specialized mailing lists, instant messaging and other so-called p2p media means that people online increasingly talk only to one another, not to people who are different or unfamiliar. The rise of this narcissistic communications is understandable, but it hardly is inclusive. People all over the Web routinely block and filter points of view they don't like or don't want to hear (or buy), so nobody online really ever has to encounter all that discordant diversity that digital technology makes possible. More disconnection.

Thanks in part to the Net, Americans have never had so many reasons to stay home, so many entertaining or useful options when they do. I remember an e-mail I got from a grandmother last year lamenting all the TV ads showing AOL grandmas getting pictures of their grandchildren. "That's nonsense," she says. "My kids don't visit me nearly as much because they feel they can just e-mail me. I love digital pictures, but I rarely get to see my grandchildren in person." Her lament -- the illusion of connection, while facing the reality of tech-spawned separation -- was intriguing.

The rise of the Net would seem to have exacerbated this tendency. Americans had already been spending an enormous amount of time watching television. Putnam found that 80 percent of all Americans watch some TV every evening, while only about 60 percent talk with their families nightly, let alone neighbors, strangers or others. Watching TV has become one of the few universal experiences of contemporary American life.

Increasingly, the Net is one too. It promises consumer use as great as television's, if not greater, since work connects with home. This seems especially ironic, since the Net was supposed to be one of the most powerful devices ever for connecting with humans. Mostly, it connects us with bits and links. In a sense, it is a connective medium. We can stay in touch with friends, colleagues and family members all over the planet. But Americans use the Net to get free data from music to weather, send messages, play games, shop and talk about sex. So the Net could exacerbate the techno-trend that television began. We're e-mailing and browsing alone as well as bowling. The Net could have an ever more striking impact, since it enables users to do things TV doesn't -- like play games and shop for nearly everything. Those, among others, were activities that people once had to go outside to do, where they might glimpse or even speak with a neighbor -- or go bowling.

America was founded partly on the notion of common civic spaces -- taverns, greens. A lot of cyber-idealists thought the Net was becoming our new common space. That hasn't happened. Nasty teenagers, spammers and greedy corporatists have made common turf on the Net either too expensive, hostile or annoying for most people to spend much time on.

Putnam's idea about social capital might be even more timely relevant than he understood.

Comments

No surprise...

[CMBurns]

As Katz stated, many places on the net

> turned to exclusive p2p "me media," the
> fragmented, often self-censored, personalized
> and specialized weblogs
[...]

That's my main concern. You see censorship almost everywhere popping up like mushrooms, be it Napster-like services blocking content or Slashdot bitchslapping whole threads because they "are not what we like our users to see" (this was practiced in the infamous "troll survey" thread).

Is there anything we can do against this? Maybe. A few years ago there was a company that provided a "second opinion" service for websites. Users were able to comment on certain pages and could also see the comments from other users visiting the site. No support from the commented sites was required, since the whole process was handled by a plugin.

This seemed like a rather useless idea back then, but come to think about it, I must admit I've changed my opinion.

C. M. Burns

Ahh yes. More newsbites

[Matey-O]

I read half way through the second sentence, then looked up at the submitter. Yup, another JonKatz diatribe. As sensational as it is empty calories.

What's never mentioned in these sensational diatribes on how TV, the Internet, Automobiles, Reading, and Fire isolate us from our community is how social people tend to be social and non-social people tend to be non-social.

Geeks have their own social groups and operate just FINE there, with robust interactions and healthy communications.

I've found the Internet allows me to discuss and communicate with folks I'd never have a chance to in the photographic community.

I've found that email and IM makes communication with my parents cheap and effortless, even though they're 1200 miles away.

I've run a local Corvette club for YEARS that wouldn't have occurred had I not met these folks on the internet.

The internet allows for some loosely connected groups that WOULDN'T EXIST without it. A continual subscription to ThinkNIC allows me to get the support from the company directly, as well as talk to an audience of like minded folk that use the NIC. That social group is tenuous enough that there would never be a Denver ThinkNIC group worth attending, much less a thinknic club of lower North Dakota. There's maybe 50 people NATIONWIDE on that list.

Further, the Corvette Forum may have 1200 folk, but if you're looking for Automatic-1989-convertible-owners-who-are-rebuildi ng-their-engines. I'd bet I was the only person in the State of Colorado. Yet, that group provides valuable insight, as the collective has the knowledge I need to complete the restoration.

Don't blame the Internet. Non-social people would be that way with or without the Internet just as repeated handwashing is not the cause, nor facilitator, of obsessive-compulsive behavior.

read wuthnow and ladd

[3jeff]

a lot has happened on this topic since the publication of putnam's original essay and subsequent book. probably the most important rejoinder is robert wuthnow's book, Loose Connections: Coming Together in America's Fragmented Communities, wherein he argues (as you might guess from the title) that americans are still quite involved with the community, but in different ways, with different values framing their involvement, and with quite less stable relationships to specific kinds of community organizations--particularly those that form the backbone of putnam's analysis. everett carll ladd also argues in The Ladd Report that there remains compelling evidence that people are participating in society.

the question then is, what is the internet/web's role in a changing social/community structure? if anything, i'd be inclined to argue that the internet enables precisely the kind of loose connections wuthnow describes. i would also say (purely impressionistically) that we now have a greater sense of a world community of which we are part, and that is thanks largely to the expansion of the internet and its adoption as a source of news. i have one word, in this regard: nettime.

A Few Random Thoughts

[spamkabuki]

I'm not sure Putnam's description of declining voting applies here. Of course presidential voting has declined. Presidential politics has declined. Why does it deserve participation? Perhaps more people just disregard the whole circus as irrelevant.

TV and the Net function very differently in this context. TV has fragmented quite a bit as cable proliferated and split into niches. When there were only a few shows on, you could expect your neighbor to have watched a given program with some confidence. Can you expect your neighbor to have read a thread on K5? The Net seems to be even more divisive than TV in this sense.

However, the Net may allow tighter communities of smaller interest. You can find people of very esoteric interests on the Net, but do you meet them IRL? except for LUGs, I can't say that I have. But when new in town, finding a group is a big help, particularly if the group has a strong social feeling. One of the better user groups I know of meets in a bar and catches a local blues band; meetings are primarily social, lists are technical.

Connections within an online community can be fragile. Katz describes the failure of the public spaces online. Obnoxiousness may come in many forms. Could be snotty kids, or snooty power-hungry editor/moderators. What happened to The First Troll Post Inv. is a perfect example of community forming around an issue online and getting slapped for their trouble. Many users trying improve the quality of communication and community on /. got whacked because of the childish insecurity of some editors.

How can an online community like /. engender real community when it is censored? Won't happen. Will I get modded down for linking to the forbidden post in a relevant subject? Could be...Burn, Karma, Burn!

Re:I don't buy it

[SirSlud]

You're missing the point. Sure, you have more opportunities to meet different people, but you're completely ignoring the tendancy for people to seek out comfortable situations. In being able to have more control over who you meet, and when, and how, and being able to meet lots more people (no one is arguing that that isn't true) you're participating in a form of self-censorship that anthropologists and psychologists tend to point out is the mental equivilent of pigging out on chocolate.

When you have too much of what you want, and are not forced into social situations where you have to deal with social situations that you are not comfortable with or enjoy, you are unable to develop the neccessary skills to deal with adversity, diametric ideologies, different thinking, etc ... You become ideologically fat and lazy, and when push comes to shove, will protect your ideologies to the very end, even if it turns out that they are not suitable or compatiable with the broader scope of the human condition.

I always thought it was kinda funny how, when I was a child, the worse the cough medicine tasted, the better it was for you. Now adays, people expect technology to make the medicine not only work, but taste better, store your contact information, and start your car on winter mornings. In other words, just because you enjoy or interpret the technology around you as 'good for you', doesn't mean that it is. Capiche?

Reversal Effect

[Amigori]

So what if I've been a computer geek for 16 years? So what if most of my friends were because we all like computers or video games? So what if most, probably all, of them are male?

So?!? I'm bored with it. I thought that it would never come to this, but I'm actually bored with computers. I've lost my passion for programming, gaming, and just tinkering with computers. While my friends look at me as a computer geek still, they see that I am much easier to talk to and am invited to other events, like going to the bar with a big group. While not all people will agree, being more social in the "real world" has made me much happier.

Ok, so you say you can't become more social. Girls don't like you and the only thing you can talk about is computers, video games, or technology. Do not fear! You can change if you want to, but I must say that it is not easy and requires lots of time and effort on your part. The first step is to become involved in something that you may have never considered as fun or entertaining before. Join a book club at the library, hang out at the student union, go to a (Gasp!) sports event like a basketball or volleyball game. And don't sell yourself short by telling yourself "I won't fit in," or "They'll make fun of me." Just be yourself and attempt to make conversation. It is a long process of trial and error, but I think the payoff is worth it. Instead of sitting around having a Q3, HL, or UT LAN party 12-hour marathon on Saturday, which is still very fun, you could take that same group and go bowling or watch a volleyball game or hang out where there are many other people of the same age. And when you return, you can still play the game(s) for a few hours.

Good Luck,

Amigori

Being online increases social interaction

[Quarters]

In 1992 I started playing an online game, Air Warrior. it was the first graphical massively multiplayer game available on a commercial service (GEnie).

It's now 2002. I've been an Air Warrior for ten years. Just recently, though, Electronic Arts shut down Air Warrior for good. I've been a member of the community, an employee of the company that made Air Warrior, and a friend to litterally hundreds of people that I met on line in that game. The community and game move to different platforms, it moved to different online services, it eventually moved to the internet. But the community always went with it. Air Warrior is a touchstone that brought together thousands upon thousands of people who would probably never have met one another in meat-space.

The one thing that will endure long after the demise of Air Warrior the game is Air Warrior the community. I have friends that I met online a decade ago that I know better than my next door neighbor. Is that a bad thing? In my completely honest opinion, no. Meeting online removed *all* of the social prejudices normally exhibited in making and keeping friendships. I've been to Air Warrior conventions(held every year, religously) where I've seen investment bankers embracing car mechanics as if they were long lost brothers. In normal circles such things wouldn't happen. In an online space, though, the friendship was made because of a shared passion (Air Warrior) and by getting to know the person and not the outward appearance of the person. Those are the friendships that will endure.

I know more people online, because of this one game, that I would bend over backward for than I do in a two mile radius around my house. I'm comfortable with that. It's not where you know people that matters. It's the people you really know that matter.

Anecdotal evidence against....

[SnowDog_2112]

I've introduced two people to the net who never used it before.

They've joined "virtual communities." They now swap quilting stories, and actual physical artifacts of the quilting hobby, with dozens of friends around the world.

Tell me how this is isolating them? Please. TV isolates you -- sits you on your couch with nobody to talk to and no reason to move. The net makes you branch out. It's reversing what the TV has done to us for decades.

People who once would have been happy to pursue their hobby in the privacy of their own home now branch out to others who share their hobby around the world. People who are too shy to go to a RL meeting of their peers will lurk on a message board and eventually get up the courage to join in the conversation.

Not every online community is filled with flames and hatred. Many are quite civilized and happily exist within their corner of the net.