Internet to Blame for Lack of Close Friends

Anonymous Coward writes "Duke and University of Arizona researchers are citing the Internet as one of the main contributing factors to a shrinking of social networks among Americans. People say they have fewer people they can talk to about important stuff, even if they are talking to lots more people from all over the place about unimportant stuff online."

Comments

Re:Did they consider

[Bastian227]

Or is it the lack of close friends is to blame for the Internet?

Alienation

[El_Isma]

I believe that the problem is not Internet, but the increase in population. I have lived in small cities and big ones, and seen other even bigger cities, and you can really feel the difference. In small towns people are friendlier, more relaxed. For instance, you may say 'hi' to anyone you cross in the street and it won't be seen as something strange (in even smaller towns -rural areas- it's more like you must say hi, even if you don't know the other person). In bigger cities, on the other hand, you can feel the distance from other people. It's much more colder. Think Japan, loads of people all together but they try to avoid contact with each other. The "personal space" is a few centimetres around you... The bigger the city, the worse the problem is. Another thing I have seen is that people in bigger cities ignore unknown people more easly. In those cities I've heard other people talk about personal matters without minding who might hear them. In my home town that would be quite undiscrete and considered bad manners. That's my opinion, anyway :)

Re:Alienation

[radicalsubversiv]

I have a hard time buying this. A quick glance at population growth in the U.S. over the last hundred years reveals that we're really not growing all that fast at the moment -- in the 1950s -- which social scientists note for a very high degree of civic engagement -- population was routinely growing at almost 2% a year. But for the past ten years, it's been less than 1%. Moreover, with birth rates at historic lows, much of the population increase we're seeing is coming from immigration -- communities which by necessity are characterized by dense social networks.

If there's a culprit to be found in population patterns and geographic movements, it's not so much in urbanization (most cities have been losing people over the last few decades) -- as in suburbanization -- a pattern of life which is characterized by atomization and long commute times, leading Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone) speaks of a "sprawl civic penalty".

Oh, and amusingly, or perhaps sadly...

[AriaStar]

...an ex-fiancé and I used to both spend so much time online that we could be in the same room and would IM rather than vocally speak to each other. Our housemate found this to be funny, though slightly disturbing, and, in the end, we had such a breakdown in real communication that we broke up (as if you couldn't tell by the "ex").

I've travelled the world...

[aslate]

Through the internet i've met a total of 39 people from a forum i frequent. We've met up several times in Europe and there've been other meets in the US and Australia.

I flew to the US for a week long holiday, with the first weekend spent in NY meeting up with a group of 13 Americans, i travelled with 3 other Brits. We toured 6 states and 3 capitals in a week and it was one of the best holidays i've had. Although i'm only 17 (Started posting at 13) i've grown up with these people. Granted, i went on holiday with a 21, 24 and 34 year old and the next closest to my age was 20 that we met, but i'm great friends with all of these people and we regularly meet.

If it weren't for the internet i wouldn't be mates with a 34 year old drummer from York. Although i was 13 when i joined, people thought i was 18, we talked to each other because we were interesting and liked the same topics, not because we met in a bar drunk and liked the face sitting opposite us.

Is it an unusual way to meet people, probably. Is it a flawed way of meeting people? So far, absolutely not.

Re:it's just laziness

[Austerity Empowers]

While I'm not sure about the merits of being peer-pressured into doing something you don't want to do, I think you're definitely off the mark on the push/pull dilemma. If anything we are more constantly bombarded with data we either don't agree with or find outright offensive to our values, a good amount of it is such utter bullshit that I would argue no one would even sat it in a face to face environment. With close friends you have a sort of pre-selected group of people who think alike, they may disagree, but never about anything 'important'. With any given search of something on the internet you're going to get every random opinion that may exist (along with 10% obligatory porn). Gradually, as with anything else, you learn to filter out sources of opinions that bother you, in the end I think it's a wash.

I'm not sure why Americans in particular are shallow and selfish as the internet is catching on comparatively slow here. If the article premise is true, and the internet is tearing apart human social fabrics, then you'd think Koreans or Chinese would be the most shallow and selfish. Not something I've personally experienced

To be slightly polemic (and borrowed slightly from Asimov), if you extropolate technological advancement to the end state, where anything can be had, what would you consider to be utopia? Some people envision the perpetual party state, having fun with friends and living closely with their peers, bound together by social laws and manners. Others might envision complete self-sufficiency, the anti-society, with no undesired external contacts and absolute freedom. I'm not sure that anything is wrong with either end state, we could site pro's and con's to either one, I personally favor the latter.