Slashdot Mirror
Internet Use Cuts Socializing Time
Sammy at Palm Addict writes "A new survey published in the New York Times states that using the internet has seriously cut into our socializing time. We spend less time watching TV and more time using the internet and following up email. 'The survey found that use of the Internet has displaced television watching and a range of other activities. Internet users watch television for one hour and 42 minutes a day, compared with the national average of two hours.'"
Since when did the NYT become the Journal "Duh!"?
There are only so many hours in a day and if you spend them doing something that you couldn't do in the past, you aren't going to have them to do things you would have previously done.
Or am I missing something?
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
Television is a kind of socialization/socializing?! WTF?!?!!
How is watching TV "socializing"?
No, really, the article said so!
... the time needed for socialization has been reduced to squat from squat-and-a-half.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I find the Internet very useful in planning social events, something which increases socializing time. I'm hardly less social because of it.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Isn't the Internet a tad more educational? Plus it IS socialising. I know I usually have about 10 msn windows open at once. It's replaced my phone as my main source of communication.
I'd rather spend my time surfing and downloading files than watching television. For example, I've watch about 5 minutes of cable news regarding the recent tsunami, of which 3-4 minutes of the footage was pulled directly off the internet and I had already seen it.
I'll add that Rudi whomever on cnn headline news is hawt.
I think that doing email and chatting on IRC count as more social than watching TV. At least it's a form of communication, whereas TV is just brainless.
If anything, being on the internet and communicating with other people is vastly more "socializing" than staring at a television.
Yes, I'm complaining about the summary. I read the article and I know it covers more than just TV watching, but come on here!
--- Ãther SPOON!
...using the internet has seriously cut into our socializing time. We spend less time watching TV and more time using the internet and following up email.
I was under the opinion that things like writing email or posting here on Slashdot were a bit more "socializing" than sitting in front of the TV watching a set of commercials interspersed with bits and pieces of some reality show.
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
"It's a bit of a two-edged sword," said Nie. "You can't get a hug or a kiss or a smile over the Internet." Many people are still more inclined to use the telephone for contact with family, he said.
I didn't know you could get a hug or a kiss or a smile over the phone. Time to start dialing those 900 numbers.
Free XBox, PS2
Oh no does this mean we are all slowly turning into slashdot zombies?
So - are we seeing more, or less adverts than our tv-watching brethren..?
.. the words before you really read them?
I first read the headline as
"Internet Use Cuts Sodomizing Time"
Whew...
watching TV for hours is cool, using a PC for any period longer than an hour makes you a geek.
"The survey found that use of the Internet has displaced television watching and a range of other activities. Internet users watch television for one hour and 42 minutes a day, compared with the national average of two hours.'"
By 18 minutes...? How is this news?
>"People don't understand that time is hydraulic," he said, meaning that time spent on the Internet is time taken away from other activities.
If someone doesn't realize that spending time on something takes time, well, I guess we might as well ask for the definition of "is" while we're at it. Because logic has left the building.
that I have a decent internet connection. i:\tv\
Boston Legal S01
Cold Case S02
Crossing Jordan S04
CSI Academy
CSI Miami S03
CSI New York S01
CSI S05
ER S11
Everybody Loves Raymond S09
Gilmore Girls S05
House S01
Jack and Bobby S01
Joey S01
Kevin Hill S01
Las Vegas S02
Lost S01
Malcolm in the Middle S06
Medical Investigation S01
NYPD Blue S12
Regenesis S1
Scrubs S04
Smallville S04
Star Trek Enterprise S04
Stargate Atlantis S01
Stargate SG-1 S08
That 70s Show S07
The King of Queens S07
The Mountain S01
The OC S02
The Simpsons S16
The West Wing S06
The Wire S3
Third Watch S06
Will and Grace S07
Without a trace S03
A new season is upon us! Wohooo!
So, what the blurb is saying is that people are communicating with people instead of watching television - and that is seen as cutting socializing time?
And disregarding the slashdot blurb, if this is communicating with friends using IM or email, rather than by phone (as seems to be the case among people I know), how is that in any ways worse?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
cutting "socializing"? So what do you call all that time having cyber sex with Pamela Anderson!?!
I'm much more funny, interesting and insightful than the moderators think
Watch television and surf the internet at the same time.
...but that's why I use it.
Esoteric reference.
Thanks to Instant Messaging...
omg lol kthxbye
We can only presume the pages of the report are stuck together..
Is this concern about lack of TV watching time from the same people who announced that watching TV was cutting into our socialising time? Wait for the next study, "Patching Windows is cutting into our Internet time"...
From th article:
According to the study, an hour of time spent using the Internet reduces face-to-face contact with friends, co-workers and family by 23.5 minutes, lowers the amount of time spent watching television by 10 minutes and shortens sleep by 8.5 minutes.
Looks like a good way to gain about 18 minutes/hour...
Using the internet decreases facetime spent with coworkers, family, and friends.
In a related study, scientists find that fire is hot.
10 Bits= $.25
100 Bits= $.50
110 Bits= $.75
1000 Bits= 1 byte
Internet use cuts into our social lives? Who knew?
How many of you DIDN'T already know that? Can I get a show of hands? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone?
Interesting... Ok, now who here really cares? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone?
What, no hands? How are you going to operate your digital watches now?
(Insert Smirnov joke, underpants gnomes joke, overlords joke, and Zero Wing joke... Rinse, repeat)
"The amount of intelligence on this planet is a constant. The population is growing." -Cole's Axiom
Lets cut the advertisement on the TV nobody watches it anymore , they have tivo anyway !
... to double and tripple.
Lets concentrate our effort on internet advertising!
and so the spam begins
I am a REAL American from Canada , not a wanna-be from the country , self called "last remaining superpower" "of America
PVRs, we skip those advertisments
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
I watch as much TV, if not more, than ever before. However, due to wi-fi and having a tiny notebook, I can now sit and work/write/do research with the TV in the background, which means my TV watching is semi-productive. I tend to leave the TV on Sky News or something.
Having the Internet to hand makes TV more fun, as you can look up movie trivia on IMDB, or get indepth information on things you've just heard in a documentary. I find it hard watching TV on its own now without playing on the Internet at the same time. TV is a great background activity, though not a good foreground one, IMHO.
Newsflash! Someone hates something and comes up with a study to prove how bad it is.
Rock music, TV, video games, and now internet. Surprise!
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
From the article:
That makes sense. A lot of times, especially in college, I would do nothing in particular on IRC/websites/the PC in general and lose 2 or 3 hours of sleep. Was it worth it? Yeah.
Still, you need to have some sense of moderation.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
A few days ago, I gave my PC to my friend in exchange for speakers for my DVD/mp3 player. I found it so easy to do everything virtually that I ended up never doing anything actually. My GPA sucks now (in comparison) because I'd end up staying on the computer about five hours longer than I meant to and I'd forget to study. I think the internet cuts socializing time because it's even LESS work than sitting on a couch staring with your friends.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
It doesn't cut into the socializing time; that's what IM and e-mail is for, and unless you're on >=56K, you're not missing any phone calls either.
That, and I'd rather spend five weeks on the Internet and see as many ads in that time as I'd see in five minutes watching television (thanks, Adblock and Firefox).
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Slashdot is hardly a television show, now is it?
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
Is e-mail not also a way to communicate hence being social?
I like muppets.
A lot of times when I'm on the computer, I'll have the TV on in the background. It's usually low volume, or even muted. Most of the time on CNN or some other news channel. It would look like I watch probably 3 hours of TV a day, just because it's on so much. But it rarely has my full attention. Am I the only one who does this?
"People don't understand that time is hydraulic," he said, meaning that time spent on the Internet is time taken away from other activities.
Perhaps it's because hydraulic is a stupid word to use in that sentence.
-Colin
How is watching TV "socializing"?
... which is really the biggest reason congress and the president are so eager to cooperate with the media cartels in weakening, and ultimately gutting, the Internet through copyright law, or at least changing it into just another medium for them to push their agenda down our throats, willing or no.
... the old guard media are a tool of control and coercion, and it coupled with the architectures of control in the form of copyright and patent law, are a tried and true means of enhancing and leveraging this control. They aren't about to let a disruptive technology like the Internet and P2P data sharing change that. If they could tame the printing press through copyright law, they can tame the Internet through modern extentiosn of that regime ... and get us uppity tech-savvy malcontents back on the couch where we belong in the process.
Go to the back of the class, slave^H^H^H^H^H^ consumer.
TV is socializing. We told you so, last night on TV and this morning on the Radio (another important social activity).
Most people watch TV with their freinds and family, right? And if not, they're less alone watching and listening to other people on TV (or the radio) than sitting in front of a silent computer, listening to their ogg or mp3 files. Indeed, they are far more social accepting our dogma and messages passively like good little cattle than persuing their own selfish thoughts and desires interactively, on-line.
Seriously, though, TV (and radio) are social engineering. Culture, opinion, taste, desire, even thoughts are cultivated and implanted through television
And I don't mean just the jackass who has been usurping the presidency since 2000, I mean every congress, and every president, since at least the founding of the FCC if not earlier, and most especially the republican congress and democratic president that signed the Sony Bono Copyright Extention Act and the Ditial Millennium Copyright Act, and the current republican president that has made hunting down filesharers a priority that takes precidence over searching the contents of containers and freight flights coming into the country, and a dozen other belated and long-needed countermeasures to terrorism and sabatage (not that terrorism is much of a threat compared to something that kills 50,000-plus people in the USA alone each year, such as automobiles, but they CLAIM it to be their #1 priority, so it deserves mention that they put the interests of the old media cartels ahead of that alleged priority). The reason is pretty clear IMHO
Welcome to the future. More of the same.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I also question the premise that watching TV is socializing. It's a passive activity and most people have the bare minimum of conversation or interaction while watching. When I was in high school, my mother would always demand that I get off my computer and spend time with the family, expressly considering TV to be "family time." Bullshit. I was interacting with people on boards and through e-mail and the rare blog back in the day, and my interactivity (not to mention intellectual exercise) stopped utterly when I had to go sit on the couch.
Read jack phelps dot net
Maybe it's just the way I'm interpreting it, but the general feeling I get from the article seems to suggest that internet time takes away from TV time, and less TV time is BAAAAAD. I was just having a discussion with a friend last night about how the internet is really our only chance at a free press nowadays. Now where did I put my tin foil hat...?
I definately spend less time watching TV (shows) because I grab ad-free versions off the net. That'll shave off 15 minutes from each show right there.
Two TV shows without adverts and I have a half hour of my life back.
Socialism is dead
..using the internet has seriously cut into our socializing time. We spend less time watching TV and more time using the internet and following up email.
I've always known Americans to be a little funny about TV and social behaviour, but... Do you really consider watching TV socialising? What the hell..
If you watch less TV and spend time in chat room and forums, you are actually socializing more with other people ( /. may or may not be included ).
When you watch TV, do you watch it with other people? If you do, do you talk to them while the show is on...probably not. But if you are on the internet talking to people in a forum, more than likely you are also watching your email, IM other people, or have another chat/forum open. You are actually doing something other than absorbing mindless crap from the TV.
In reality, MORE is to LESS as TV is to SOCIALIZING.
I'm not a doctor, but I play one in bed.
Whats up with these stupid, pointless survey's being carried out ? I feel like i'm watching the 10 o'clock news.
As far as I'm concerned, discussing news for nerds with fellow geeks on slashdot is socializing.
The majority of time that I spend on the internet is spent communicating with others in some way. I would think that sending email and participating in forum discussions qualify as socializing. Heck, even the time I spend playing WoW counts as socializing, IMO, because I am in constant contact with my guildmates.
Television is an entirely one-way connection: you watch it. Even if you happen to be sitting in a room with other people, if everyone is watching the TV, no one is actually socializing with anyone else.
And furthermore, DUR! What a brilliant study: hey, guess what I figured out, if you spend time doing something, you can't spend that same time doing something else. Somebody give me a grant!
...maybe that's what we want? Not everyone's life is fairy-tale perfect, ya know.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
I knew that using the Internet or BBS systems reduce socialising time back in 1989!
Why UNIX?
I don't know about anybody else, but I watch tv while I'm on the computer. My room mate and I watch tv in our room while we're sitting in front of our computers doing stuff online. So I get my recommended daily dosage of television every day right alongside my chronic internet usage. Hooray for multitasking! And hooray for being a college kid with little better to do than watch tv and be online at the same time.
don't mess with the united dubyan states of texamerica - we will get nuculear all over your ass
> They mean the psychiatric definition of "socialization"
This is the kind of bunk psychiatrists push around, without consideration for reality.
I spent 10 years being sent to a eight different psychiatrists for depression & social withdrawal, went through numerous attempts at 'socialization' before I found a good doc who diagnosed a simple vitamin B absorbtion problem, cured by injections.
Eight psychiatrists couldn't tell the difference between someone who has symptoms of a Vitamin B deficiency and someone who is genuinely depressed & withdrawn.
For comparison if you had a computer that didn't boot and it was sent to eight computer techs from a certain school who diagnosed it with various windows related problems, but it was a Mac, and not one of them picked up that it was actually a Mac, then you'd have to be concerned about the whole state of computer techs from that school and come to the conclusion that they were taught rubbish.
Similarly, Psychiatry/Psychology is bunk.
The article cited three things that Internet use causes people to cut back time doing. The largest was face-to-face socializing. Television viewing came in second and last was sleep. Although the summary made it seem that television viewing and socializing were equated, that was not the case in the article.
...there seem to be a fair amount of people who met each other on slashdot and are now good friends in real life. If that's not being social, well, then, OK, whatever...
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Why does this reek of funding from the marketing industry? They'd be the sort to claim sitting in front of the tube with a stupid, glazed over stare is somehow "socializing" and implicitly, good.
As far as I'm concerned, the less time wasted in front of the advertisement device, the better.
At least in finland porn is often called hydraulics. Fluids and pumping motion after all. Except in some japanese flicks.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
According to the study, an hour of time spent using the Internet reduces face-to-face contact with friends, co-workers and family by 23.5 minutes Obviously you want to have a private time alone as you go hunt for porn on the internet.
What a silly description to this article. Put it half the title (socializing) and then give a description about the other half (t.v.) Then watch them morph into one idea and have everyone question how one is the other. Only on /.
I completely disagree with the gist of this article. On-line game playing, reading and responding to e-mails, IM, etc. are forms of socializing, much more than staring blindly at the TV. My family lives overseas; with IM and e-mail, I communicate with them at a much more constant, intense, intimate level now than when I was a kid sitting around the family room with us all in the same house. In those days, we'd all wind up veged in front of the TV paying more attention to it than each other. As for friends, I'll always have one or two or more long running IM chats going, sometimes they heat up, other times they do quiet for a while but I am socially in contact with different people all day, instead of just a few minutes on the phone. Also, the article doesn't even mention that, while doing stuff on the net, I (and most people I know) have the TV droning on in the background anyway.
I recently struck it up with a very nice man from Nigeria...
Shouldn't it just say, "Home computer use up since birth of Internet" or "Internet usage up since Net becomes more interactive"? It doesn't matter anyway, my life is in complete ruins and I blow the bell curve. I watch more television since getting cable and DVR, and my Internet has increased as well. My work attendance average is what suffers...
Click here or here.
What kind of nonsense is that?
The next thing they'll try to say is that slashdot readers are nerds, or that we're not smooth with the women.
we're sick of the idiot box preaching at us. The 'net is interactive and we have more choices. Plus we do socialize on the net in email, IM's, online games (mmorg types) and so on.
OMG internet use cuts socializing time. I would have never figured that out by myself. How many millions did this study take?
you insensitive clod!
Humans have evolved technologically, we have gained a lot more knowledge, but lets face it, when it comes to society and communal living, we have DE EVOLVED. This is inpart due to technology and knowledge. We know too much, we gather too much, we do too much, that by the end of day, if a stranger said "Good day sir", you'd end up slamming a 40lb sledge hammer into this head. No one cares
Or did noone ever think of that?
PARADOX OMG INTERNET SOCIALIZING
Also, once again, the lameness filter shows it's homosexual jewry by assuming that I'm trying to yell.
True! He says something that we don't have the guts to say.
I even watch 1 hour and 42 minutes of TV a week much less that much per day. I get home, and bam into gameland. Chat with friends, mix music. Why on earth would I want to rot my brains, when I can use the internet to learn and stimulate my brain.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
We spend less time watching TV ....
....
Thank God! Maybe there's home for mankind after all
-kgj
-kgj
Does it count as using the computer or watching TV as I sit here watching Family Guy on one monitor and posting to /. on the other monitor?
Since when did sitting in front of a TV count as social time?
--LWM
Oh yeah, definitely. I'm way too busy talking to people in IMs, e-mails, message boards, chat rooms, and IRC, to socialize with anyone.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
Unless you meant to imply that we are SUPPOSED to be mindless robots who follow hours of sitting in front of the tube with gathering at malls consuming crap.
/. is "media on fire".
TV is far less of a participatory (McLuhan's cool-to-hot [print-to-television]) medium than the internet (including downloading P0rn!)
In McLuhanistic terms, web browsing on
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
This is Slashdot. What is this 'socializing' that you all speak of??
Man! You deserve a break. :-)
My computer is within 2m of my TV. In fact, the TV remote typically sits on top of the computer case. It is rare that I have only one of the devices on.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
I threw out my TV back in 1997 when I found myself watching the Cuttlery Show of a Friday night because it was the best thing on.
Now I use the internet to communicate (like this!) and I gained a life, my own.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I still wonder about people who want to 'watch the news' or 'check the weather' on TV.
The data speed of TV is too slow.
NOAA radio gives you current weather info now,
and the news is more up-to-date on the web,
and can come from a variety of sources - some without corporate bias...
"Internet users watch television for one hour and 42 minutes a day, compared with the national average of two hours." Maybe Internet users aren't sucked into that big corporate void of ADVERTISING! ADVERTISING! ADVERTISING! An 18-minute difference is about the amount of commercials in an hour (hour-long dramas, for instance, run about 45 minutes; half-hour sitcomes run about 22-23 minutes).
I RTFA'd, and I thought it was odd that the article leads off with "a study says internet use impacts TV viewing." Well, duh. So I looked at the report's company website - Knowledge Networks. They're a bunch of Stanford professors who build a product marketing research company. Ah, there's the connection. They wrote a report that says "folks are using the internet - your TV advertising is less effective." Makes more sense now. You might consider this report to be an advert for their Syndicated Products. After all, if you're in Product Marketing, you need professional study info and long-term trend analysis info to back up your current crop of wild-assed guesses, right?
Spending time doing one thing reduces time available for other things. Shock! Horror!
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
again,
Whats a TV?
For me, Internet made me socialize due to my speech and hearing impediments. It is a lot easier to communicate online and I get to meet all kinds of people. I love the Internet. I could live without TV.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Don't be frightened by the domain name, its a legitimate website with a funny acronym.
This guy is spot on in his article about why society basically sucks. Check out his other articles too.
I don't give a darn about socializing anymore.
Im not a nerd for nothing :D
The less time you spend in front of the TV, which has little to no redeeming value, the better. I got my current job on the Inet, I met my current GF on the Inet, I meet with people on a local IRC channel and once or twice a month we have parties where we all get together and meet "face to face"
If anything I am better off financially, socially and intellectually.
TV? For fucks sake people it's crap and sucks your brain out.
If nothing else at least the Inet involves some degree of interaction...the TV does not.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
After reading the article, I now hate people even more. I guess the internet did make me less social.
-Diomedes
As for Diomedes, you could not say whether he was more among the Achaeans or the Trojans.
The other good news is that if you watched TV in the USA for 1 hour and 42 minutes you also watched 33.966 minutes of commercials. If you surfed the web for 2 hours you probably downloaded oh, lets say 5 MB of spam graphics mixed in with a few more MB of text related to the spam/shit.
FEED ME SPAM ! FEED ME COMMERCIALS ! MORE ! MORE !
This is positive. Following up email means that people are actually communicating with each other, whereas television generally meant the opposite.
With only a few notable exceptions, I have tended to long be of the opinion that television has been probably the single most worthless and negative piece of technology invented thus far...and its one claim at redemption IMHO could be the statement that it was a stop on the journey to the invention of the computer monitor.
Even at its most banal, the Internet is generally still encouraging some degree of both literacy and interactivity from its users. The "idiot box" on the other hand, is richly deserving of the term. It has been proven that in some cases a person's level of neurological activity is higher during sleep than it is while watching television.
The obsolescence of television, if it occurs, is not an event that I will waste any time mourning whatsoever...and I am in fact inclined to believe that if the universal death of television were to take place tomorrow, an intellectual rennaisance of unparalleled scope would almost certainly take place in the weeks, months, and years to follow.
I spend 50 hours a week socializing - if you count Slashdot as socializing.
1 hour 42 minutes instead of 2 hours? That's like just saying that internet users are smart enough to use their computers during all the commercial breaks.
Geez. Hasn't anyone been outside? Ghetto thugs standing in the street with a hand in their pants...
Stay home. Buy porn. Masturbate. It's better than what's outside.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Yes, it's called Television Programming for a reason. It's job is to prepare you for your role in the social/economic system, Inspire you to be the super productive slave/bitch that we are and make us feel that over achieving in the norm. The bad guy always falls in the end even though he is glorified during most of the program. Thats what you are to beleive.
P.S. You are feeling very sleepy. You can't even feel your government(/the rich folk) lifting your wallet out of your pocket.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
Sounds like you can't focus on something for more than ten seconds.
That must be much better than the TV I have, which makes for something that I don't even like to watch, much less have as "background noise". On broadcast, everything but PBS is about 50% advertising of the lowest, most obnoxious sort. They use "compressed" (essentially maxed out) audio, flashing lights and other distracting tricks to try to MAKE YOU WATCH and REMEMBER their message to buy their crap. Most of the crap would be rejected as the lowest sort of spam if it came by email. There's nothing I hate more than visiting a house where CNN is on 24/7 and it's hard to have a conversation over it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Cuts into face-to-face socializing? Hey, this is slashdot. Can't cut into zero.
Table-ized A.I.
Hey, don't forget all that quality time spent fixing people's broken Windoze! That's plenty of social time wasted for sure. Your friends might even be so insulting as to watch TV in another room while you do the job for them. Nice!
The only computer fix up I did this Christmas was one job with Linux and OSX. None of the software had a problem, the cable company (Cox) turned them off when they tried to use a laptop via DHCP, so all I had to do was to reset their cable modem. A hub, a second network card, guidedog and 15 minutes of softare install would have fixed the problem, but they did not think it was worth the effort. No winblows fun for me, yeah!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I watch maybe 35 hours of T.V. a year (professional and college football mainly), equaling about 0.09 hours of T.V. watching per day.
Most of my work time and off work time is spent on a computer and about 3/4ths of that is involved with surfing the web, handling e-mail, chatting, playing games, etc.
I lost interest in T.V. when I had over 78 cable channels (five years ago) and, for me, was constantly amazed that there was nothing on, or of any interest to me at all.
IMHO, T.V. is currenting dying a slow and painful (i.e. reality shows) death.
I'm a extremely shy guy by nature(until I know you) so in actuality thanks to the internet, I'm socializing more than I would otherwise.....
Next generalized pointless study please......
average IQ has increased ten points.
I don't know about you, but I backed that off to 0 hours and 0 minutes a day. The problem isn't with the internet displacing TV. The problem is with TV no longer being interesting.
Lets face it, the content gets more and more mindless, and the commercials get longer - TV is cutting it's own throat with this one.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Im the only person that eats, watches tv, and uses the pc at the same time?
"A new survey published in the New York Times states that using the internet has seriously cut into our socializing time. We spend less time watching TV and more time using the internet and following up email.
;-)
Now watching TV is not socializing time, ever tried to talk to someone while they watch their favorite show? Sure didn't work for me.
Also following up on email got to account for just a little bit of socializing.
-- Hello World!
We spend less time watching TV and more time using the internet and following up email.
Seriously, if you consider watching TV to be your time of social interaction. YOU HAVE NO SOCIAL INTERACTION.
And don't anybody give me any bullshit about watching TV with family and friends.
Pah, what piffle. Can't say more right now - I've got 13 RSS feeds still to read, and I was meant to join a New Year's party one hour ago.
This is most likely because after multiple generations of mass media cutting into the inter-generational transfer of values, we often find our face-to-face relationships dominated by values determined by those thousands of miles away from alien culures. Naturally we are alienated from those most intimate with us. So, before we can resolve our alienation from those most intimate with us, we must all escape the central and alien points of control over our culture and values. We can then discover who we are and reestablish real relationships with those with whom we should be most intimate.
Seastead this.
We're all smart enough to use PVR's to skip the commercials :)
It's like back when Seinfeld episodes were new. Everybody would go home, watch them, then talk about them around the water cooler the next day. If you didn't see the episode, you couldn't be in on any of the master of your domain jokes.
Maybe the researcher is confusing socialization with inprinting.
Communication medieval ages (before radio)
1. Hoardes watch church/political leader (talking head) say NI and they like it ! Hell yeah !
2. Hoardes start saying NI by imitative imprinting
3. NI NI NI NI NI NI !
Communication renaissance (after telephone)
1. Hoardes still do the above
2. But now they also use telephone and keep on saying NI NI NI NI !
Communication pre golden age (TV and radio )
1. Rich ones become talking heads (initial private and government TV)
2. NI NI NI (BUY) NI NI NI (VOTE ME)
Communication golden age (internet)
1. Much more people become talking heads !
2. NI NI NI (BUY) NO NO NO NO DON'T !
3 ????
4. Profit.
Massive jailarity chaos ensues, welcome to meme era. All your internet belongs to us.
Let's see... Wednesday Caleb was over, hanging out. I met him through a Linux Users Group email list.
:)
Last night my wife and I went to a local amateur circus performance with a coworker and his family, including some of his relatives who were visiting Florida (where we live) from MA and WVA. I originally met this coworker online. At the time we lived 400 miles apart. In fact, the online meeting led to his *becoming* a coworker, and now we live 15 miles apart and see each other -- including families -- regularly.
Last week I went out drinking with some guys I semi-hang out with on IRC during work. We socialize on IRC in between job tasks, and get together at least twice per month to drink, go sailing, watch movies, listen to music, etc. We arrange most of our get-togethers by IRC and/or email.
I correspond with people all over the world by email. In the last two years I've traveled on business to 12 U.S. states and six other countries, and in every one of them there were people I already "knew" and enjoyed meeting F2F for the first time. These are people I never would have met without the Internet. And it goes the other way, too. People I "know" through email or IRC show up here and I show *them* around.
Does reading and posting to a West Wight Potter (make of sailboat I own) forum count as socializing? What about when members of the forum get together for group sails, as happens at least a few times every year here in Florida -- and once or twice a week in San Francisco Bay, where there are a lot more Potter sailboats?
There are two local business people I met (through mutual friends) on Linked-In with whom I have lunch monthly; we bounce ideas off of each other and give each other advice on careers and such. This isn't anything formal, and we aren't in similar businesses. We just like each other, and it's nice to get an outside perspective on some of our ideas.
What was that about the Internet cutting down on socializing? For whom?
Doing anything that's not socializing, cuts socializing time. I love brilliant flashes of the obvious like this.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
My girlfriend and I can spend hours surfing for porn together.
I soo wish!
nothing to be proud of either. You're assuming people who drive/clean with the radio on are suffering from A.D.D. as well ? Previous home wife and I lived in was a studio type deal and we had a table setup in front of the T.V. with 2 computers on it. Normal livingroom with couch and chairs in front of the table. It was the best of both worlds and we could watch TV as well as do internet oriented things, or games, what have you. If guests came over we could entertain via computer or television. It worked out very well. Now that we moved into a more modern home we set aside a computer room, and have both regret it. I find it to be very antisocial now to disappear to the computer room to work on some financial stuff while the wife prefers to spend the evening in the LV watching TV.
...for those gaming sessions in which I don't want to hold a keyboard+mouse
I don't know about you, but I never thought staring at a box counted as "socializing." The excerpt mentioned following-up to email... that's at least interpersonal communication. It seems the choice of "socializing" as a label for "everything besides computers" was chosen simply to make a more inflammatory headline.
No, I did not RTFA. Happy New Year.
Save time now so you can waste it later
Isn't it possible that people who use the Internet more often have a tendency not to watch TV?
For example, I think TV is packed with brain-dead shows and loads of tripe, save for the occasional gems like The Sopranos or the Chappelle Show. But I'm not a fan of media pushed onto me either; I prefer my entertainment at my pace - hence, my propensity is to surf the 'net more than watch TV.
The question is this: what did people do before the Internet?
Prior to getting into the BBS scene in 1993 and on the 'net in 1995, I personally played video games. LOTS of video games. I probably spent as much time playing video games as I did surfing the 'net now, and all this time, my TV watching time has really been fairly-minimal.
I think it's entirely possible that people who surf the 'net simply have a tendency to dislike watching TV -- *not* that the 'net is causing people to stop watching so much TV.
But that's a broad generalization; the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle (i.e., some peoples' time has shifted from TV watching to Internet use, whereas other peoples' TV watching time hasn't changed in response to the popularization of the Internet). Still, it undoubtedly takes more brain cells to get and do things online than it does to watch TV...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
it is neither kneejerk nor uninformed. i am right and you are wrong.
I wouldn't say that watching tv is totally lacking of socializing but I'd say that it often is. I usually watch tv with my girlfriend, in which case we chat & snuggle, or with friends in which case we sort of do the hanging out thing (sharing snacks, chatting, grabbing each other beers, etc). So it isn't non-social for me but I think most people do watch tv alone or all sitting there slackjawed and blank faced. There is the socialness of the shared experience too. Reading a book can be social if your friends read the same book and you use that as a connection or a topic of conversation. TV can work that way.
One show I suggest watching with friends is Showtime's weekly series Dead Like Me. That show is so wrong that it inspires a lot of back and forth conversation. Spike TV's Most Extreme Elimination is pretty good too. I think most shows don't inspire the watchers to converse in that same way. Sports might but I've noticed that many geeks are not huge sports fans.
I think talking on the Internet is very social but we all need to remember to spend some time with friends and family in real life now and then. I know a lot of people who'd rather talk to someone they only know online rather than long time real life friends and family. Online friends are great and I've turned many online friends into real life friends but you don't want to ignore the people who really care about you.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
...cut down on the time one could be awake during the day!!!!
I started a Yahoo! group for local freethinkers in the area where I live about 14 months ago, and since then members of the group have been gathering twice a month to socialize and discuss whatever's on our minds. Of course we also use the mailing list/forum to do the same during the rest of the month, but that's not an online activity that detracts from socializing, rather that's done when socializing is inconvenient or impossible.
Were it not for our collective online presence and participation, we would never have found each other or wound up socializing twice a month otherwise.
Take that, you bean counters and statistics wonks!
You're about to start thinking. Good for you.
Seastead this.
At what scale is freedom of association overridden by your claim that people have a fundamental right to enter any country to "seek a better life"?
Can anyone enter your family's property to "seek a better life"? Can anyone force an adoption by your family so they can "seek a better life"?
How about when a group of families together own a larger piece of land with covenants governing their association? Does someone who "seeks a better life" have a right to hold those convenants in contempt because they are "xenophobic"?
Is a body of law, such as the Constitution, invalid because it gives the association the right to exclude, for whatever reason they see fit, people who attempt to enter the association's land "seeking a better life"?
There is a huge difference between arguing that its good to expand immigration and arguing that immigration is a fundamental human right. You do the latter -- and have done so repeatedly.
Seastead this.
Are you talking about ethnically-pure ethnic conclaves of the Bo Gritz type? Nothing wrong with this, unless you go what they did in Couer d'Alene: attack people on public property.
"There is a huge difference between arguing that its good to expand immigration"
I have a big problem with immigrants coming here not to work, but to suck on the public teat and laze on the vast welfare hammock. If these people were kept out, while letting the "good" ones in, immigration might possibly go down.
However, I think it is bad to exclude certain immigrants on the sole criterion that they are good productive workers.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
To which you responded: "I don't think it is a fundamental human right."
When previously you said:
What is being taken from the majority of the US citizens, are flower lowered immigration levels, is their right to exclude people with whom they wish to not include in their lawful association known as the United States of America. What is beign given to the corporations is a their wish to pay less money in labor costs. It's a clear transfer of rights.Seastead this.
If you are in a condo association and you run round with guns enforcing policies for others in the association against the rules to which they agreed on the grounds that some outsiders must be guaranteed the "basic freedom" of invading the condo association, you will rightfully be thought of as a totalitarian tyrant.
The analogy is perfect since you are arguing that due to some specious "basic right" already possessed by the immigrants and/or corporations, the rest of us must admit immigrants to the United States.
If you don't like immigrants, don't employ them, sell to them, buy from them
Until you are more effective working for the repeal of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, than you are opening borders against the wises of your co-citizens, you are fair game. Anyone who recognizes the fact that freedom of association is, not simply a cornerstone, but the foundation of all human rights rightfully sees you as a totalitarian tyrant who is a participant in the greatest current crime against humanity.
Seastead this.
You have declared war on the majority of the citizens of the United States.
Worse, you deny that there has been an ongoing government enforcement of violation of the sort of freedom of association you claim we possess in our private affairs. This indicates that your moral bankruptcy is compounded by mendacity or militant ignorance.
Read up how the Supreme Court has ruled about Title VII and Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Acts as preventing you from forming businesses or even making contracts based on criteria for associations of which the government disapproves.
Keep in mind, this same government de facto approves of the association where you may be incarcerated and raped by a "minority" gang if you dare exclude from your private association the immigrants you say have a right to cross the border and stay.
Seastead this.
Does this mean that if we have a vote and 51% say "immigration yes", then you are a hypocritical totalitarian for wanting to end it?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Interesting use of the word "panmixia". Are you in favor of the government being able to ban people from marrying those of other races?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
You responded: "And you claim to be against totalitarian governments and abusive elites...."
I'm saying the government's interference in our private decisions about with whom and on what basis we assocate is of the same moral quality as your interference with our decisions as US citizens about with whom and on what basis we share territorial residence.
There is no de jur "civil right" for anyone to be an employee nor to be a candidate for awarding a contract. Likewise, there is no "basic freedom" for anyone to reside in the US other than US citizens and those who US citizens decide to allow to reside. These supposed "rights" aka "freedoms" are purely de facto operating under color of law with the support of treasonous court decisions.
Seastead this.
Then I said: "Worse, you deny that there has been an ongoing government enforcement of violation of the sort of freedom of association you claim we possess in our private affairs."
To which you had the audacity to reply: "I am fully aware that the government (lodging laws, etc) does violate freedom of association in many ways, including lodging laws (Holiday Inn owner denying lodging to a black person, etc)."
Just what in the Hell is wrong with your brain?
First, you are saying we can associate how we want then you say you are fully aware we can't associate the way we want.
Secondly, you characterize Civil Rights interferences in a far more limited light than they are actually enforced.
Read my lips mentally deaf one:
You may not set up ANY business without passing the government's test on who you employ.
You may not sign ANY contracts without passing the government's test on who you do sign.
Your command "If you do not like immigrants, do not associate with them." is pure garbage and your inability to hold in your working memory your own statements from one response to the next proof you are zombified to the point you are worthless to dialogue with.
Seastead this.
One is a recommendation on how to live your life without forcing beliefs on others. The second is a recognition of what the government enforces right now. That you fail to see the difference is not my fault.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
His market gap is highly unlikely to be the only one.
What's ridiculous is not a claim that media is biased toward the views of a media management holding those views, but the idea that said management would be so ethical that they would not sacrifice stockholder's profits rather than allow their biases to show through. They would be choir boys compared to other management hierarchies if that were the case and anyone who has hung out with Hollywood professionals will tell you these guys aren't choir boys.
And please, please, let me hear you say, "Media management's values are representative of the population's values...."
Seastead this.