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Social Side-Effects Of Internet Use
venicebeach writes "The World Internet Project has released its third annual report on internet usage. It contains few surprises, but lots of interesing stats - for example the most experienced internet users spend an average of 15.8 hours online per week. CNN is running a story on the social findings - "New study shatters Internet 'geek' image." Apparently they are suprised to hear that internet users are more social than non-users: internet users watch less television, read more books and engage in more social activities."
Considering that the average American watches four hours of television per day, I'm not sure the average person has much time left for socializing. Anything that reduces the amount of TV watched, including using the Internet, is likely to improve how social that person is.
If the 'most experienced' internet users spend an average of 15.8 hours a week online, what the hell does that make me? (Most Experienced)?
Mostly this article just reinforces what I already knew about myself and my online associates. Honestly, the whole geek image has been one of stereotype since the beginning. Not everyone who uses computers and goes online frequently has thick glasses and no girlfriend, sitting around playing EverQuest all day. (This isn't an attack on EQ players, I am one.)
Most of my friends who can be found sitting behind their computer all day watch little to no television, and spend a great deal of their time reading (I personally find e-books easier to read than real books, and do so often.) I would say the internet is a far better medium to immerse yourself in than television or radio.
Apparently they are suprised to hear that internet users are more social than non-users:
.. True
... True
... Definitely false. Unless IRC and Instant Messaging is now considered a social activity.
internet users watch less television
read more books
and engage in more social activities.
I'm just curious -- unless you're, say, a parent reading to their child, how exactly is book reading a social activity?
May we never see th
I watch very little tv (no pre-set shows i watch/like)
I read books often (1 every month or so)
I only "go out" on weekends
I spend the majority of my time at work chatting online and surfing the net, then I come home and play FFXI.
Why should I go outside? I get hay fever or cold or could get in an accident. It's not warm enough to use the pool yet, and the jacuzzi is nice, but I get cold when I get out.
I think i'll just stay in and continue my life.
Ave Molech Setting
I agree.
Although I consider my self to be fairly competent when it comes to conducting myself socially IRL, when it comes to meaningful discussions the net is the way to go - even when I am talking to people I know IRL.
From my observation, the biggest reason your confidence gets boosted when on the net is because you don't have to worry about the person's initial reaction - i.e. you don't see facial expressions, hand movements, etc. Thus, you are not continuously evaluating your "speech" to see if they care. That leaves a lot more room for confidence and attention to what you do mean to say.
Yeah, this roughly parallels my experiences. I had already run into a lot of the common pitfalls of the social experience, via flamewars and the like, by the time I was ready to interact with people. Most of the growth then required was personal growth, rather than interpersonal. Well, more of it than I would have thought, anyway. I wonder if this is the new generation of geekdom, some sort of change in the traditional isolation? Doesn't seem to help love lives much, but most of the geeks I know nowadays have fairly large social support networks, as opposed to my non-geek friends.
-1, "1337" speak
The article is not clear about it, but I would guess they did not adjust for Socio-Economic Segments (SES). SES would reflect mainly an individual's income and education level.
Internet usage of course begun in the higher SES levels (having started mainly in the academic world) -- and has ever since penetrated more the top levels than the bottom ones (this has in turn given risen to the term digital divide). On the other hand, guess which SES reads more books and has a richer social experience ?
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Often surveys will knock out answers too far outside of the mean as people who took the survey as a joke. I imagine we would fall into those categories that are eliminated because they're considered (by non /.'ers) too high to be factual.
Space: The Final Frontier or What's Between
G. W. Bush's ears.
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Kilgore Trout
I agree with you as well. I wont go as far as saying that I was once an anti social person and the internet changed that, because that isn't my case, but I can say that interacting with people across the internet is much easier than in the real world, like someone said in a post above, you don't have to deal with all of the external social scrutiny that takes place in a first time physical meeting. On the web, the interaction is purely mental, it?s almost as if it's more of a direct connection between two minds, because only language is the medium of communication, words to be more specific (body language, voice tones, facial expressions can't be mis-interpreted, because they're not there in the first place)
On the other hand, this also creates a much larger problem, the issue of authenticity of the interaction from the ground up. In reality, we all use those conversational elements such as vocal tone, facial expressions and body language to judge the credibility of the communication, and how true it is, because this is the only character information you can gather from them at the time (apart from the actual conversation), coming from the individual. Of course, both of these scenarios would apply best to someone you're meeting for the first time, if it's someone you know, the process for calculating the credibility of what you're hearing becomes much more complicated; variables such as how long you've known the person, if they lie a lot etc, come into play.
While the internet has made it much easier to interact and meet new people by shedding the stigmas of the social world, it also provides a much better mental rock to hide behind when wanting to swindle or mislead individuals in any case.
Plus, you get much more time to think about what you're going to say. Ever been in a real-life conversation where the other party tolerated a 20-second delay in your response?
I get so tired of this assumption that just because a person reads a lot, they are automatically more intelligent. I happen to read quite a bit, but I know people who spend way more time than most people watching TV, yet are very intelligent. Specifically, I know of a college professor that could out debate anyone on Crossfire, and does nothing all evening but watch History and PBS.
Also, what's with the assumption that any reading material is automatically more valuable than any television show? I can learn more watching 30 minutes of TLC, Discovery, A&E, Biography, History Channel, or PBS than I can in spending three hours reading whatever trash Oprah is recommending this week. I do agree that reading increases vocabulary, but I would also argue that television is much more conducive to other areas of learning, as it delivers its message via sight and sound.
As for the social aspect, many of us are forced into social situations all day long. We do not need to spend our times outside of the office, carpool, school, college, whatever to increase our social skills. However, we do need "alone time" so that we can regroup and prepare for the next day.
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
Strange, it's kind of the opposite for me.
I used to watch news on TV and read the papers, now I browse most of the time.
I have good knowledge of tech news and important international events, but I find that I'm not really aware of local news anymore. In fact, "local" here means anything from the city to the country (Canada).
The information is available, it's just that I don't really care much...
The problem is that internet access is correllated to education level. Furthermore a person with a high education will tend to read more books. In other words it is not very surprising if internet users read more books. Similar arguments can be applied to many of the other conclusions in the report.
In conclusion this report does not tell us if internet use changes the life style of a person.
Apparently they are suprised to hear that internet users are more social than non-users: internet users watch less television, read more books and engage in more social activities."
That's because I can find out anything RIGHT now by clickety clicking....rather that sitting in front of my TV and listening to the sound bite commercials from the news channells all night waiting to "find out at 10..."
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Does that count as being online 168 hours a week?
If Im working on some programming project for, say a 4 hour streach, and Im flipping back and forth to a browser pointed at some online documentation, does that count as 4 hours online? Or (pulling a number out of my ass) is only 10% of that online?
... doing a survey of the population of Internet users is more than a little selective. I'd guess Internet users are probably also better educated and more affluent. Does that mean the Internet *made* them more educated and affluent? No. It means more educated, affluent people use the Internet. The same goes here. *shrug*
I've had a permanent connection for many years - back as far as permanent dialup. I've long stopped thinking in terms of online or offline, Internet use is just another seamless part of daily computing.
Trying to count how long geeks spend online daily would be as stupid as trying to count how long non-geeks spend using electricity each day.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
I stare at my computer screen for scores of hours a week. I spend lots of time reading documents pulled from the Net, either webpages or downloaded docs (apt-get install ; man ). The actual Net transactions are very short compared to my reading time: I read at about 4800bps and download at about 3Mbps. When am I online? What is "offline"?
--
make install -not war
I know the parent poster was intending to be funny, but I think there is a lot of truth to the statment. /. or whatever), this is the same group which tends to read more often, and whatch less TV. The latter of the groups, while not illiterate (at least not the majority), seem to think that there is a finite amount of thinking they are born with, and are being very careful not to use it all up. This group is unconserned with expanding their own horizons, and as such have little use for the majority of the content available on the internet. It is this group which tends to spend more time watching TV, which provides a form of entertainment(if you can call most tv entertaining) that requires very little thought.
At least in the social ciricles of which I am a part , or an observer of, there seems to be a sort or line by which you can divide people into two groups. The first group pride themselves on intelligence, or at least in learning about new things, keeping up with world events, and in general being well rounded people. The other is the group which prides themselves on ignorance, these are the people who are proud that they cannot set the clock on their VCR. It is the former group which I think tends to spend more time online, seeing it as a valuable resource for information and for the communication of ideas in an open forum (be it IRC, newsgroups,
It seems to me that everyone has some amount of time is spent non-socially. It is this time which those intent on learning and the like spend on the net, and those content to live in a happy stupor spend watching TV. Of course the average net user spends less time on the net than the average TV viewer spends watching TV because the net user has more options available to him or her. For those wishing to use their brain as little as possible, the majority of that non-social time can be spent watching tv, movies, and thats about it. For the group who likes to learn and expand their mind however, the choices for that non-social time include being on the internet, reading, drawing, playing music, and a number of other artistic or challenging activities.
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"Apparently they are suprised to hear that internet users are more social than non-users: internet users watch less television, read more books and engage in more social activities."
apparently the authors are a little confused about causality