Slashdot Mirror
Internet Not the Social Hinder it Was
imjustatomato writes "A 1998 study showed that the Internet causes declines in social relationships and isolation, similarly to how television causes social disengagement and bad moods. This is the 'Internet Paradox' because while the internet is heavily used for communication, it makes people lonelier. However, a more recent study shows that now the internet has a positive effect on social and psychological well-being. This is even more so for those who have more social support and are extroverted in nature. Interestingly, frequent Internet use is associated with a decline in local knowledge and interest in living in the local area."
> Interestingly, frequent Internet use is associated with a decline in local knowledge and interest
> in living in the local area."
Anything which involves sitting indoors and staring at a box is likely to decrease your knowledge of your immediate environment, isn't it?
. . . "we are going to go to where the internet is really good."
If this were really happening, what would you think?
I find the bit about less local interest interesting as I know that I had little desire to leave Tennessee until I began surfing the internet regularly, meeting people from other places and reading about them on online news sites. Indeed, the first time I truly wanted to leave my state came when I 'dated' a girl online. . . and it's thanks to internet research that I ended up here at Boston U. Naturally curious person enabled by the net, or innocent Southern boy corrupted by the tubes'o'satan?
[Terribly witty statement]
The most recent of the two articles was published in 2002. Is this really relevant to the internet of 2006?
S.D.Rycroft http://www.simon.rycroft.name
...since 1998 the internet has helped make available viagra for all!
I'm gonna guess that the main difference here that in 1998, internet relationships weren't counted as "real" relationships.
qntm.org
One of the answers might relate to the definition of social and psychological well-being. For example; in 1998 if someone said to have numerous online friends, they where looked upon as anti-social and unable to make friend in the real world. This is beginning to change.
For goodness sake, this is pushing it a bit far, reporting on 5 year old papers. In other latest news from 2002 - New Orleans happy with flood defences, Lebanese economy doing well with current peaceful regional politics, British Airways relaxes security on air travel a year after 9/11 .... sigh ! :-)
frequent Internet use is associated with a decline in local knowledge and interest in living in the local area.
Which of course is not really a negative at all. "The internets" doesn't cause disaffection, it just shows you all the alternatives out there for all those already not happy where they live. No one community is a great place to live in for everybody after all. If it helps you find a place you'll like better it's just good for everyone.
Also, the ability to have contact with diverse groups no matter where you're physically residing probably helps smooth the rough edges out of living anywhere. If you can cultivate your interests over the net, staying in your community may not chafe as much as it would have done in an earlier era.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Unlike regional newspapers, for example, the Internet makes news about distant cities as accessible as news about one's hometown."
But also, we read about the cool things other places are doing on places like slashdot. Of course, we're not interested in all the BAD news about those places. Because the crime news about other places more or less matches that of our own. Maybe that's why the grass looks greener. Because we see all the positive and negative of our own environment, but only the "cool" stuff going on in other places. So naturally we want to go there.
> no, yes, maybe (tagging beta)
'Hinder' is a verb. The noun form is 'hindrance'.
Haskell, the static-typed, lazy, polymorphic, programming language.
I was painfully shy as a teenager. Was terrified of approaching people in general to talk to them and would avoid most social situations at all costs - I guess I had what psychologists would call a social anxiety disorder. I couldn't even post in an internet forum without the fear of humiliation.
Yet it was the internet where I dared post before I ever tried to contribute in such a way in a real life situations. The more I interacted online, the more comfortable (and confident) I felt doing the same in reallife to the point where I can approach strangers and start conversation.
*Shrugs* Maybe it was the internet or just getting older, as I realize this process happens to a lot of people who were extremely shy/self-conscious as teenagers. But there is no comparing the internet to TV, the TV is a passive medium, the internet is interactive. The only danger I see is when people start substituting the internet for real life.
The Internet is obviously still something of a "linguistic hinder".
And I would rather be online than talk to some of my loser neighbors. And I know I'm not the only one who feels that way.
Sorry, slow news calls for bad jokes.
Great Intellect...
... and commitment is based on sacrifice of your time, which means half of the time communicating when your friend needs it. People immediately feel that you are communicating only when you feel like communicating, not when your friend needs to pour their positive or negative emotions. Internet is all about communicating only when you need to communicate.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
>> 1) the internet population has grown to include almost everyone.
I would even dare to say it includes more than "everyone". For many people with disabilities it opened a complete new world. I know several people with severe anxieties who now have a social live because of internet fora, msn, social networks like Hyves, etc. In "normal", everyday live, you don't see these people (outdoors, at work, etc), and therefor many people don't know that they exist.
Whilst I'm often 'accused' of living a solitary and isolated life, spending much of my time at home watching TV or chatting/surfing on the Internet or playing online games, I certainly don't feel that it has isolated me OR caused me to suffer from disengagement or bad moods. Quite the contrary infact. I've made many online 'friends' and when I was 'suffering' from mild depressive periods last year, it had nothing to do with with using the Internet and, infact, that combined with me taking up a voluntary position with a local timber recycling community project, helped me 'snap out of it.' Watching comedies on television makes me laugh and cheers me up; documentaries enlighten, educate and informs me; soaps are great entertainment and escapism (yeah I know many folk will disagree but that's me. :)) and so on.
"... while the internet is heavily used for communication, it makes people lonelier."
Certainly not in my case. Infact it helped a lot having people to interact/chat with and talking to people I would not, without the Internet, have 'met' or got to know.
"However, a more recent study shows that now the internet has a positive effect on social and psychological well-being."
Now THIS I agree with totally. It most certainly has.
"Interestingly, frequent Internet use is associated with a decline in local knowledge and interest in living in the local area."
I wonder how many people were 'surveyed' for these conclusions and results? I've been a frequent user of the Internet for many years, as I'm sure have many of 'you', and in the last year or two I've 'joined' the local resident's association, got involved in helping my local LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) councillors with mail drops in the local area as well as joining the local Community Guardian scheme. I love living in my local area which over recent years has become much more pleasant-a-place to live. Two or three years ago we had winos, prostitutes, drug users/sellers and so on frequenting the place and hassling the local people yet the police have done a wonderful job and now I wouldn't want to live anywhere else!
Surely I'm not the only one, am I?!
There's simply no basis for drawing conclusions here. while it's quite entertaining to talk about this, it would be a big mistake to actually think that either of these studies mean anything.
I'm pretty sure that if you did a few more studies, you could get some that confirm and some that refute the idea that internet use leads to/cure social isolation.
To quote a wise man:
"The only possible conclusion the social sciences can draw is: some do, some don't."
- Ernest Rutherford
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The internet helps make it painfully obvious how much greener the grass might be on the other side by presenting the user(s) with comprehensive and detailed local info about practically anywhere. It makes wherever you currently are not seem as rosy... especially if where you currently are is someplace that would make a person WANT to be on the internet a lot.
stuff |
Tantos satélites en la era comunicacional aún no logran acercarnos totalmente bien
Translation:
"Many satellites were inside, with us before the interior come close
the good full communicational of the fist already".
Wow your spanish is pretty screwed.
the translation is:
"So many satellites in the communication era still can't make us get totally close" (literally, or so many sattelites in the communication age and we still cant get close enough)
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
not like this will be seen on page two... but what the hell.
I can say with 100% certinty that the net has GREATLY help my social life. I suffer from a rather permanent and disruptive physicological condition (that i wont go into details here) that was crippling my social interactions with the greater public. Through the net I was able to find, talk to and get support from others with the same condition. Suddenly I wasnt as alone, I found out how to seek treatment and now I am a FAR happier, more social, person.
Without the net i would still be wollowing alone in my room insted of enjoying life.
Heh. You needed the Internet to learn that? No offense, but I'd have thought that anyone who's ever went to (high) school, had any work that doesn't only involve telecommuting, or, really, went out of the house at all, had witnessed the RL-equivalent of karma-whoring. People want to be perceived as part of the group, well liked, cool, fashionable, etc, and will go to insane (and often bloody stupid) extremes to achieve that.
It even has an impact on polls and statistics, as you have to skew your poll to account for the facts that:
- if it seems that the interviewer wants a particular answer, they'll give that answer, just to be liked. So if you actually want a fair result, you have to go to great lengths to make sure that the question sounds as neutral as it the English language allows. (Or, conversely, if you want to skew the statistics to your ends, you just need to give people a strong indication that only a monster would pick the other choices.)
- all else being equal, people tend to answer "yes" more than they answer "no". (Presumably because being too negative is perceived as something bad or non-social.) So you have to actually have randomized tests, where the same question is asked in one way on some forms (e.g., "are you for continuing the war in Iraq?") and as the opposite on others (e.g., "are you for stopping the war in Iraq?")
- as anthropologists showed, even when you accounted for the above two, if you ask people anything about themselves, the result will be basically a lie. Well, not as in a deliberate, conscious-level lie, but more like distorted through the need to perceive themselves as doing the right and, most importantly, the socially-acceptable thing. _Very_ few will give you an answer that, according to the current social standards, would ammount to a "yes, I'm an asshole" confession, even if the poll is completely anonymous and confidential.
Or you can see that at smaller levels, and sometimes even at petty levels, from high school to your everyday work. People ostracize person X, just because they want to fit in a group where the popular ones are against person X. People pretend to be stupid in school, just because in nowadays' broken culture it's _cool_ to be stupid and ignorant, and is waay uncool to show any academic effort or ability. (And god forbid showing _interest_.) Etc.
The most perverse form of that is "groupthink". Take a dozen people which, each of them separately, are against doing X. Put them in a group where they each think that the rest of the group is _for_ X. Watch them all vote/chest-thump/shout-slogans/whatever for X, just to please the rest of the group, and take a decision as a group that neither of them actually really wanted. It's more common than you'd think, and affects a wide range of groups, from small cliques at work to government commissions to whole countries.
Etc, etc, etc.
So let's just say that Slashdot's karma-whoring is actually just representative of society as a whole. In fact, compared to some RL counterparts, let me assure you that the worst
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
That's one thing I don't really get: the mentality some people have that the only way to make online friends, or to succeed in a MMO, or whatever, is dependent on pretending to be a horny female teenager.
Somehow it doesn't even add up. The most popular people I've met on MUDs and MMOs for example, were playing male characters, and were the people with a memorable personality one way or another. They might have been the guy who played for ever and knows every single secret lever, or the guy who was the most involved in the community, or the most helpful newbie-helper, or the most (nauseatingly) consistent full-time role-player, or in one case simply the biggest asshole on the MUD. (But always very careful to not break any rules, so the admins never could quite justify outright banning him, even if they were _very_ irritated by him too.) You'd be surprised at the number of fans one can have by simply being the biggest asshole and full-time ganker on the server.
But the opposite works just as well, and in fact much better when you're low level and in no position to be an asshole. You'd be surprised how many people will remember you just because you were nice, helpful, and able to function in a group. Heck, even just being the polite newbie who knows how to ask politely and doesn't try to sound like an "I have 7 level 60 characters, you noob, I just forgot where Stormwind is" clown, you'd be surprised how it does get enough people trying to help. Some of us actually _like_ babysitting a polite newbie. Remember to say "thanks" at the end, and you may well be on the way to making a friend.
If anyone finds it necessary to play the "I'm a cute, lonely 13 year old girl" card to get any "friends" or any online help, then I'd advise them to take a good look critical look at their own personality and approach to human relationships, because that's where the real problem lies.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.