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No Harm, No Foul in Heavy Net Use
An anonymous reader writes "Breathe easy, addicts. A new study says there's no harm in extended Internet use, contrary to earlier research indicating otherwise. Science Blog reports on an a University of Alberta study that found it can even be therapeutic for those 'facing social isolation and loneliness.'" So rejoice, everyone reading this on Sunday afternoon.
And I've got a certificate that proves it.
So great. No harm in EXTENDING my net use bwahahaha... Are we sure that the ISPs didnt start this???...
Extended Internet use is just like extended use of anything else. There's a point at which it becomes excessive and harmful. But given the user-controlled nature of the Internet, I don't see how anything less than a pathological obsession therewith could cause true physiological harm (couchpotatoitis notwithstanding)
Look, defenseless babies!
tell that to my girlfriend!
Yeah, but what came first?
If people weren't in front of their computers 24/7 maybe they wouldn't be isolated and lonely..
Just a thought..
Will code a sig generator for food
Deep vein thrombosis can really kill a good buzz.
All these studies have ever proven is that there may be a correlation between heavy internet usage and loneliness / depression. The problem they completely ignore (or perhaps the ones ignoring it are the reporters writing about it) is that correlation does not prove the direction of causality. Does the internet make you lonely, or does being lonely make you want to use the internet?
...if using the internet leads to a quasi-addiction (like reading Slashdot), you can easily waste many hours a day for years of your life in front of your computer instead of doing something with other people.
Something that would actually reward you and bring you forward in your life.
Breathe easy, addicts. A new study says there's no harm in extended Internet use,
Well, not asides from sleep deprivation and self starvation, that is. Those aren't very harmless, last I heard.
Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
...is harmful. Drink too much water, and you'll die. Moderation in all things should be a way of life.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
As long as the circumstance of isolation aren't CAUSED by the Internet use, I'd agree. Right now I'm living at home with only about 20 other people in my village, and the Internet is a great way to discuss politics, and technology with other interested people. But once I'm back in a city, I'll be spending less time on the computer, and more time out in the real world meeting real people and talking face to face. I'll have to get used to not saying "LOL", and get my point across the old fashioned way.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I didn't develop bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome and bilateral cubital tunnel syndrome at 19 from watching too much television. Let's be realistic here - too much of almost anything is bad.
G
How can you suggest that the internet as a whole can be either harmful or harmless? There's such a wide range of things that make the interent-porn, gaming, newsgroups, bulletin boards, research, trolling Slashdot, IMs, email etc. It's a tool, and as such comments can only be made on the relative safety of the activities done with it, not on the tool itself.
I have AS, and can't imagine what my life would be like without the internet. It gives me an easy way to keep my brain active without leaving the house. TV and radio are crap and books require leaving the house (or money I don't have). I can read unlimited amounts of conversations without participating or even letting anyone know I am there. This is amazing for me because I get experience with other people without the stressful interaction. Best of all, I can share my opinions anonymously!
Some people don't have a choice when it comes to social isolation.
The most obvious example, of course, is the elderly who are shut in. Before you say "but they're old," the elderly are increasing using computers more and more, especially to communicate with family and friends.
Secondy is what I fall into. I have social anxiety disorder, and the net is one of the few ways that I can easily communicate with others. If you don't like using the phone and meeting new people isn't a very pleasant experiences, the 'net helps out tremedously. It helps keep me some sort of connection with the outside world and it works as a springboard for increasing my contact with others.
Not all people are at fault for causing their own lonely situation.
The research also showed that the Internet group reported a greater tendency toward membership in voluntary organizations and a higher level of helping others.
Yup. Worked 55 hours a week, took a light load of classes and joined a community group - all thanks to search engines, online documentations and wishing it be so. Soon, I had a decent job, and with the downturn in the economy I still am able to work in a computer related field. Definately not bad for my experience.
However, after a week or so of continual use of a monitor under flourescent lights, my eyes kinda twitch like.
Another thing, every once in a while if I make a mistake off of the computer, like putting too much pepper in the stew, or throwing a paper-wad and missing, I find that my first instinct is to CTRL+Z!
Stuff that matters.
It all depends on the person, not what the study says. If net use interferes with other activities in your life (yes, there are other activites) or simply you're not happy then you can consider it bad for you. It might be 12 hours/day or less, everybody is different. If you're happy in front of that computer and in peace, I don't think a study should tell you to get off that machine.
What about the guy who died in the internet cafe (I think it was dehydration in South Korea) and the guy who was too busy playing Everquest to make sure his child didn't die?
On the other hand, I've used the net for probably some 4 hours today alone, and it may well have some role in molding the well-rounded individual whose post you're currently reading. Hmmm... Another good reason I don't have kids, I guess.
She found that Internet users on average were more likely to have sociological and psychological problems than the regular community. However, for each of the psychological items, she also asked when the Internet users first experienced their symptoms and found that onset of psychological symptoms "clearly preceded Internet use," at a range of five to 22 years.
This is interesting, I guess, but really doesn't say anything about the effects of internet usage. We don't know how psychological functioning changed as a result of internet use. All we know is that these people were experiencing problems before they used the internet - according to their memory, at least, which is not the most reliable form of evidence.
I have trouble believing that there is no detrimental effect. Let's a assume for a minute that there is no direct psychological harm done; perhaps it is even a little bit beneficial. Which is more physicly beneficial: Sitting in front of a monitor all day, or going out playing a game of basketball with a couple friends? Almost anything that involves other humans is more physicly beneficial simply because it makes you get out of the chair. Even going to a LAN party requires you get up, get moving and carry your computer out to the car. Its well known that the body affects the mind, just like the mind affects the body. Their study says there is no harm, but as compared to what? Lying in bed all day?
'nuff said.
Questionaires and Surveys are tools used by Social Scientists in order to gain credibility for what essentially a totally qualitative inquiry. They question the users, the users answer, they do not psychologically analyze each user or attempt to understand they simply retrieve data directly from the user. These studied are incredibly biased to the surveyor. This is essentially a poor evaluation using quantative methods in a naive fashion to bolster the logical and scientific aspects of the study.
Are those studies really serious, "using" Internet means so many things, it's like saying "living can kill".
Spending hours in "the outer world" of games or business could lead to social issues (well, like spending 3 nights in a row in casinos or all week-ends at the office). But for really shy people it is also a way to socialize. Or sometimes, it's just fun. Like somebody said, everything can lead to addiction in huge quantities, even CocaCola!
I personally spend a lot of time (in my own time-scale) on Internet, but well, less than the population average 2-3 hours in front of TV, and I don't have TV. I keep in touch with friends, learn far more than the same time stoned in front of a TV, mix professional and personal interests... And I don't spend so much time surfing at the office;-).
ClaudeBBG
It's just that then I'd have to go out into that scary sunlight. Eeewww.
I, for one, spend most of my living hours at my computer, at work and at home, and thus forego a chance to lead a more active and healthier lifestyle. Even 20 mins spent jogging/walking every evening would be healthier than the same time spent browsing /..
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
After that last report that said it was addictive and damaging, I tried to quit and couldn't.
Now I don't have to!
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
Bah. There are plenty of things worse than reading slashdot on a Sunday afternoon...
Like... err... posting to slashdot on a Sunday afternoon.
Yeah, but perhaps the reserchers have never been here. They'd be singing a different tune...
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
AS is basically a mental disorder that, for all intents and purposes, defines the average geek.
m l
From: http://www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger/aswhatisit.ht
Individuals with AS can exhibit a variety of characteristics and the disorder can range from mild to severe. Persons with AS show marked deficiencies in social skills, have difficulties with transitions or changes and prefer sameness. They often have obsessive routines and may be preoccupied with a particular subject of interest. They have a great deal of difficulty reading nonverbal cues (body language) and very often the individual with AS has difficulty determining proper body space. Often overly sensitive to sounds, tastes, smells, and sights, the person with AS may prefer soft clothing, certain foods, and be bothered by sounds or lights no one else seems to hear or see. It's important to remember that the person with AS perceives the world very differently. Therefore, many behaviors that seem odd or unusual are due to those neurological differences and not the result of intentional rudeness or bad behavior, and most certainly not the result of "improper parenting".
By definition, those with AS have a normal IQ and many individuals (although not all), exhibit exceptional skill or talent in a specific area. Because of their high degree of functionality and their naivete, those with AS are often viewed as eccentric or odd and can easily become victims of teasing and bullying. While language development seems, on the surface, normal, individuals with AS often have deficits in pragmatics and prosody. Vocabularies may be extraordinarily rich and some children sound like "little professors." However, persons with AS can be extremely literal and have difficulty using language in a social context.
it burns us! Stay in your dank cave and guard your precious!
The author of the study sought to disprove the notion that heavy internet usage had a deliterious effect on people experiencing depression.
That's a long way from claiming that Internet usage is not harmful, or beyond that, that it may have an effect on depression.
This is the psycho-industrial complex in full bloom. Truth is, "internet usage" is such a scientifically meaningless term as to evade any meaningful scientific metric. It is analogous to studying groups of people "using sidewalks."
"Internet usage" can mean anything from viewing pornography to online communities like Slashdot, with lots of stops in between. Each of these stops will have radically different effects on the user, particularly along an axis like "social isolation." Personally, there are times when I use the Internet to interact with people, there are other times that I use it to get the hell away from people. It's a meaningless indicator.
There is a mention at the close of the story that indicates the author is going on to study epidemiology. Good, she needs it.
The best way to do is to be.
I'm tired of all these studies on retarded crap. Where's our cure for cancer or aids? Quit pissing around and do something useful. Something that isn't going to change 2 weeks down the road when someone else gets some grant money to blow.
Not only that, but people who follow these "reports" are like stupid sheep. "So-and-so says eggwhites are good! Lets all eat eggwhites!" "So-and-so says sitting on your head for an hour a day will extend your life by a year! Lets go buy some mats!"
Honestly, if people can't use a little critical thinking when reading these sophomoric studies, they deserve to die from the jump off the bridge.
You're nothing; like me.
I am the proof that with increased internet usage your social skills actually increase. When I moved to US (from Europe [and a nerd] originally) it was hard for me to adjust to cultural and social settings here. Even the US nerds had social advantage over me in terms of their fluency in English. I distinctly remember my freshman year in college I could not wait for weekends. Not because I wanted to go out and party, but because all the other people did, hence freeing up all the valuable high speed for the distro sites that I was running. Yes that is how pathetic I was.. While all the people were getting laid I was on my computer doing all kinds of nerdy stuff... I despised and hated talking to people in public, and you could say I suffered from social disorder.
Eventually on internet I started talking to people outside of the distro groups that I was dealing with and eventually I was becoming more and more social on net which in turn resulted in increased social activity outside internet domain. Finally I started chatting with girls, and yes I was pathetic.. I had no idea what to say or how to say it.. But with persistence (what did I have to loose? They had no idea who I was anyway) I started figuring out girls and what they want to hear and eventually became really good at it, and eventually I reached a point where if there was a girl on net that I wanted to talk to I could get her attention in no time and could get her phone # in first or second chat..
That increased smoothness transcendent into real life when I would meet these girls and with each new date my seducing skills and my confidence grew... Going to real dates I would learn even
more about club and bar scene and would use internet skills to expand my efforts into bar and club scene. After few years of net (and Gym) I was able to get a date with any girl whether I met her on net or in a bar or club and get her attention or whatever else I wanted.
The social impact of net did not only change my dating scene. On the internet I had ability to talk to thousands of people (whether it is scene related or other subjects). Increased exposure to people of all types of walk improved my communication skills and eventually enabled me to subtly manipulate conversations to get the desired result. I was increasingly getting better at reading people on the spot based on their responses regarding the conversation. This was in turn very helpful in first few jobs that I held out of college.
Today, when I look at myself back 5-6 years ago its amazing how much my social skills have changed. And the only reason that happened is because of net. So anybody out there trying to claim that net has negative social impact on the population as whole is DEAD WRONG and I am the living proof..
Where can I download that?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Well...
The problem is, there's much of a muchness about this.
Sure, some people will wind up thinking they're happy while being depressed because they're on the net too much. But at least some of those people would, had they not used the internet, been just plain depressed because they WOULD have failed in real world social situations.
Sadly, in modern society it quickly becomes impossible. Fall just a little bit behind in social skills in young life and you're in big trouble; others don't want to interact with you because of your bad social skills, and then because you can't interact with others, you can't practice and your skills don't improve. Meanwhile, the others ARE interacting and getting better, and the bar to get involved with them is getting higher and higher.
And yet the amount of support offered is lousy. It's been discussed in groups for this sort of thing that the level of emotional pain felt by a man who is permanently unable to connect with any females (regardless of whether or not he "deserves" it) is actually worse than that felt by a woman who has been raped, but look how the support for these things differently.
Why is nobody doing studies of what "social skills" are, and trying to isolate the behaviours they represent?
Your damn strait at 16hrs a day I'm not an addict.
;-) That's not really isolating. it's a different form of communication.
I think there's valid evidence to back up this new claim.
Think about how "isolated" you really are. What do most people do online:
Email
Instant Message
Forums
Read News
far from isolating activities. In fact, the goal of these activities is to prevent isolation. Be part of a community.
We email friends we don't see often (replacement for the "letter" as our ancestors called it).
We IM friends "what are you doing tonight?", "want to have cyber sex?"
Forums are a giant community messaging each other.
News is simply staying informed about activities and events of others.
That's not isolation. That's assimilation into society.
Just my $0.02
Whoever wrote this report didn't look at my waistline.
I can tell you where you can get half life ...
All I have to do is read the comments, and I know what my response will be.
There's a problem which has been around for many hundreds of years prior to the invention of the Personal Computer, indeed, it has been around before even the Industrial Revolution. It is something which many, perhaps rightfully, believe to be a mental disorder. That problem is, to express it in "nerd" terms, a binary outlook on the world.
Under this problem, one believes that everything is either good OR bad, black OR white, present OR nonexistent, etc. I think most of you already know what I'm going to say next, and a good deal are likely to stop reading at this point because it's been said so many times before, but I'm going to say it, anyway. The world is full of color and number, beyond the arbitrarily set demarkations of 0s and 1s.
Here I'd like to introduce two of my own personal adages. Nothing is ever so simple as to be yes or no/black or white/etc. if you will take the time to look deeper than just the bare surface; and also, there is an exception to every rule, even the rule that there is an exception to every rule.
The second, though recursive, is applicable to just about everything. The first applies specifically to issues, world views, and "studies" like this one. As others have said before me, and more will say again after my time in this world passes, anything taken to an extreme is unhealthy if not destructive. But, and this must be determined on a case-to-case, personal level, doing, consuming, etc. anything within a certain limit will not do enough harm to be of concern (unless, of course, you're a hypochondriac).
Is spending time on the internet harmful to one's health? That's hard to say for sure, due to the ever-growing amount and quality of mediums that the internet provides. Assuming an otherwise healthy body, is sitting around and using the internet harmful? See the last sentence of the preceding paragraph.
All of this being said and understood, one can readily see that such studies are non-issues when all they conclude is that something is either good or bad (1s and 0s, again). The fact that they raise awareness of a topic is usually beneficial, granted, but if a study is so simple as to have such oversimplified results, except for what the researchers may learn, that study is irrelevant.
The harm we cause ourselves is not brought by what mediums, ideologies, places, and polities (among others) that we live in, but by what we choose to limit ourselves to. If one limits oneself to sitting in a chair for twelve hours a day, awake but relatively immobile, then it is that choice which brings about the onset of harm or potential for harm.
That being said, I'm going to go finish some work and then go outside, hopefully before the sun sets.
~UP
Eat the Path.
I don't think extended internet use has any harmful effects. But I do think that it can be a symptom of depression and other serious problems.
It all depends in what's going on in the person's head. I know some people close to me who have used the internet as a way of avoiding their real life. It's so fun and quick and interactive and social... well... who needs real life, right?
There actually seems to be a little subculture of depressed people who get together online and thrill each other with attention and understanding. Which almost sounds like a good thing until you watch one of them spiral downward and suck the life out of everyone around them in the real world.
Someone close to me hit rock bottom this way. Luckily she is now recovering. She had to swear off many types of internet usage (gaming, IRC & IM). Which was sad because there can be some legitimate healthy fun in all those things. Now it's just email and purposeful browsing.
Her old online friends who were left behind are like a bunch of old drinking buddies trying to convince the recovering alcoholic to come back out and have some fun again. They email regularly about how much they miss her hanging out online with them... for 12 to 18 hours a day. Can't she just come back and play a little?
Anyways, thought I'd throw in my $0.02.
Cheers.
Moderation in all things should be a way of life.
Sounds almost like Buddhism, in this case the extreme of self-indulgence: "The path leading to the ending of suffering is called the Middle Way because it avoids the two extremes of self-indulgence and self-torment. Such extreme behavior does not lead to peace of mind. This pathway consists of cultivating virtue, meditative serenity and wisdom and is further elaborated as the Noble Eightfold Path." (http://www.abhayagiri.org/dhamma/middleway.html)
Personally, I'm a rather non-religious person but I find Buddhism has a lot of interesting aspects. Most of all, it doesn't bring down commandments like the Bible or the Koran does. What matters are if you do what you do with the right intentions, both in word as well as action, and to develop yourself as a person to further those goals.
It may seem incredibly vague but it is a good starting point for developing ethics from within, rather than taking external ethics as your own. Geez this went far off-topic, that's where a google search for "middle way" gets you...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I also suffer from anxiety, but I realized that staying behind the computer all the time wouldn't help me to become more socialable. I knew that I had to communicate with the outside world, even if it meant being nervous for a while. I literally forced myself to go out and see shows and meet people. It's worked very well. The Internet can great for when you're lonely or isolated, but it can also be your worst enemy. It doesn't help to build self confidence in social situations nor does it help you to better understand people. Sure in some ways, people that block you on AIM for no apparent reason can give you a glimpse of how people act, but there's much more to that. And it can be easy to take things like that personally if you don't have the self confidence and self esteem to get over it. The biggest problem for me was realizing that there was no convention to people. There was nothing to analyze or to understand. There was no reason for me to take the way people acted personally. People are creatures all of there own and you're not going to find that out by being on the Internet all the time. If you want to get the self confidence needed to overcome social anxiety, you have to understand that there is no convention when it comes to people and there's no reason to get nervous from being around them. And it all has to start with taking the inititive to get out from behind the computer and face the world. It can be hard at first, but the more you interact with people the easier it gets. I still have some generalized anxiety, but the self-confidence I've built up helps to balance things out.