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.'"

Comments

The Journal "Duh!"

[aborchers]

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?

Re:The Journal "Duh!"

[Vampyre_Dark]

Or am I missing something?

Nope, Captain Obvious needs a paycheck too!

Re:The Journal "Duh!"

[Golias]

What I wonder about is how the NYT survey would have counted people like me.

Last night, I was playing World of Warcraft while marathon-watching the Season 1 episodes of "Tru Calling" on DVD using the eMac that sits next to my game PC.

So, are multi-taskers like me counted as "on the Internet for five hours", "watching TV for five hours", or "both"?

If "both", then I managed to squeeze 10 man-hours of recreation into the time from 8:00 PM to 1:00 AM. Talk about productivity! w00t!

Re:The Journal "Duh!"

[severoon]

I think this study is flawed. Aren't the people predisposed to spending lots of time on the Internet actually *more* socially engaged (albeit virtually so) than they were previously? I think so...as I understand it, this study doesn't measure the demographics before and after Internet presence, they just compared the two. Likely you'll find that, before, these people weren't socializing anyway--they were on the computer. Now the only difference is, they're hardwired.

Huh?

[code_nerd]

How is watching TV "socializing"?

Re:Huh?

[Crosma]

It isn't. And if anything, using the Internet is more socialable than TV, because of message boards, IRC, IM, etc.

Re:Huh?

[X-rated Ouroboros]

They mean the psychiatric definition of "socialization"- Where you are taught the norms and mores of a society. By failing to watch TV, we're not getting the correct doses of "BUY! BUY! BUY!" (which is bad) and by using the internet, you're learning to develop your own opinions about the world (which is worse). All around antisocial behaviour from the social control and culture industries' perspective.

Next thing you know, when internet users do watch that 1h42m of television, they might [gasp!] question the talking heads. Then where would they be?

Re:Huh?

[fr2asbury]

OK, I want back and RTFA. TV viewing is not socializing, just something that loses time to online activities along with face-to-face socializing and sleep. This I can see. I do not think that the loss of television viewing is something that should be mourned though.

Re:Huh?

[Rick.C]

How is watching TV "socializing"?

I knocked on the front door at a friend's house once. The door opened and the whole family (minus the one who had answered the door) was sitting on or around the sofa watching TV. They were all just staring, zombie-like, at the screen.

It was so cute!

Re:Huh?

[Malc]

The internet fosters selfishness and impatience. I've noticed the change in myself and others.

The internet is a medium that makes it very easy to reach out to like-minded people - this does not encourage development of one's own opinions. For this you must spend time with people who have differing opinions, which the internet doesn't encourage. This can lead to extremism and intorlerance of others. In a similar vein, a piece on 60 Minutes within the last few months documented the segregation of Americans in some places where Republicans choose to live amongst Republicans, and Democrats amongst Democrates. This has lead to a decline in debate, and increase in intolerance and extreme attitudes and a general decline in functioning democracy.

cuts socializing time?

[tuxette]

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.

Re:cuts socializing time?

[Quasar1999]

better still... I use the internet to actually socialize... It allows me to talk to 5 to 10 people at the same time much more efficiently than I could on the phone, or even in person... Bless chat programs... :)

Re:Cuts Socializing time?

[ahsile]

I agree as well. Not only is it easier, it's less expensive! Since school ended my friends and I have all migrated to different places. Rather than all of us racking up long distance trying to call each other, we hop on the internet (which we all have a connection to anyway) and chat. Sure, we're not actually speaking to each other... but if we really wanted we could fire up the webcams and the microphones and you're set.

(And once again...) TV is also not a social activity. I don't know how sitting around watching moving pictures constitutes socialization.

Cuts Socializing time?

[mortonda]

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.

Hot damn

[savagedome]

"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.

My socializing has become more efficient

[WormholeFiend]

Thanks to Instant Messaging...

omg lol kthxbye

Oh, please

[welshwaterloo]

"The study, titled "What Do Americans Do on the Internet?".. "

We can only presume the pages of the report are stuck together..

That's really sad, still

[Beolach]

Internet users watch television for one hour and 42 minutes a day, compared with the national average of two hours.

IMO, that's not that big of a difference. And it's really sad. Is there really 1 3/4 - 2 hours of TV worth watching *every day*? I don't own a TV tuner of any type. Don't miss it at all. If I did have a TV, I'm afraid I would get a lot closer to that 'national average' than I want. It's just way too easy to veg out. I remember times when I'd look at the clock, and think "What the #$%* have I been doing for the last hour and a half? None of that was worth watching."

Not for me. TV is a great background activity.

[Peter Cooper]

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.

Bull

[tekunokurato]

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.

define socializing

[{tele}machus_*1]

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!

Re:Since when was watching TV "socializing"?

[XMyth]

Yea...it's strange like that. You can talk about a TV show, but when you try to talk to someone about a forum discussion they just look at you weird.

Or is it just me?

mutually exclusive?

[prophetofdelphi]

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.

Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

> 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.

This article is kind of silly

[minairia]

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.

Not So True

[Rie Beam]

I recently struck it up with a very nice man from Nigeria...

true

[Zareste]

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.

Marketing Research

[Migraineman]

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?

Internet made me socialize more.

[antdude]

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.

Increases *my* socializing time!

[Roblimo]

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? :)