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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.'"
How is watching TV "socializing"?
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...
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.
"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
Or am I missing something?
Nope, Captain Obvious needs a paycheck too!
We can only presume the pages of the report are stuck together..
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!
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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.
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
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!
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...
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!
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?
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?