IP: A Search for the Net Impact on Human Social Life Washington

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

A Search for the Net Impact on Human Social Life 
By John Schwartz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 7, 1998; Page A03 
What is the Internet doing to us? 
The burgeoning online medium has proved an irresistible subject of study by
social scientists thrilled to see a new society emerging virtually overnight.
Academics are examining every facet of online life for America's millions of
Internet users, including the ways people use the new medium, its successes and
failures in education and medicine, the prospects for electronic commerce and
the development of communities of people linked via modem. 
But despite a great deal of research, "We know very little about how the
Internet is actually affecting people's lives," said James E. Katz, a leading
researcher in the field and professor in the Department of Communication at
Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. 
Last week a much-touted study from Carnegie Mellon University suggested that
users of the Internet become lonely and socially withdrawn. 
"The more people were online, the more signs they gave of being a little bit
more socially isolated," in responses to standardized questionnaires used by
researchers to measure depression, stress and strength of social ties, said
Robert Kraut, the lead author of the study. 
Reports on the study sparked a strong reaction in the online world from people
like Arthur R. McGee, 32, an employee of a San Francisco-based Internet service
provider for nonprofit groups. "Going back as far as I can remember, my use of
[online communications] has GREATLY increased my human interaction," McGee said
on WELL, a Sausalito, Calif.-based online service. "I've met more people IN
PERSON of varying ethnic and social backgrounds than I would have without these
communication tools." 
But computer author Robert Lauriston countered, "I think a lot of people are in
denial about the negative effects of spending too much time online." On the
global conference system known as Usenet, Donna Gettings, 43, a manager of an
at-home medical transcription service in Pittsburgh, quipped, "According to
this survey, I guess I committed suicide some time ago." 
The Carnegie Mellon study is part of HomeNet, a $1.5 million project in which
93 Pittsburgh families were given free computers and Internet accounts. The
three-year-old project has already published studies showing, for example, that
use evolves from initial passive World Wide Web surfing to communication
activities such as e-mail and Usenet. The group has also shown that people who
view pornography online tend to greatly decrease their porn surfing after the
novelty wears off. 
HomeNet, however, has its limits. The 169 participants are a small group and
were not selected at random -- two things that make it difficult to generalize
any study results to a larger population. The researchers also did not follow a
"control," or similar group that had no Internet access, generally considered
an essential component of any such work, said Jim Thomas, a professor of
sociology at Northern Illinois University. That the researchers only surveyed
the participants twice -- once before they went online, then a year later -- is
a serious weakness, said Donna L. Hoffman, a researcher at Vanderbilt
University. The Carnegie Mellon researchers themselves note that the study's
large population of teenagers, who tend to grow depressed and withdrawn, is one
factor that may have skewed the results. 
The new research is "not ready for prime time," Hoffman said. "This is not
saying that the Internet does not cause depression," though she doubts it does
because such a finding would "run counter to experience, anecdotal evidence,
practice and scholarly research" like her own. "Maybe it does -- but this
research does not prove that." 
The notion that Net use might cause depression "surprised us," said Carnegie
Mellon study co-author William Scherlis. He was careful to note that "the
effects that we noticed are small, but they are statistically significant. . .
. It's not a big enough effect that if you use the Internet too many hours,
you're going to wake up one morning and need a prescription for Prozac." 
"These are relatively minor symptoms of depression," Kraut explained, "more
like being in a funk than being suicidal." 
Kraut declined to even attempt to translate the slight drop on an abstract
scale of loneliness that the researchers used into real terms. "I'm not taking
too seriously the actual numbers people are reporting; I'm taking seriously the
fact that there is a trend." 
Scherlis suggested that simple changes could make Internet exploration a less
solitary pursuit -- simply moving the computer from a basement office to the
family room, for example. 
Kraut said the various uses of the Internet might affect mood; simple Web
surfing, which for the most part resembles television viewing, might leave
users feeling enervated and somewhat down -- as television can. Reaching out to
others through electronic mail, discussions and participation in online
communities, on the other hand, might make people feel more connected and
positive -- especially if they tend to build the strong bonds of friendship and
support that are still more common in the real world than in the online one. A
preponderance of weak relationships, they suggest, might not have the same
uplifting effect. Those factors could be seized on by companies offering
Internet services to come up with a better product, Kraut said. 
The group's initial analysis of mood and various kinds of Internet use,
however, has not borne out Kraut's theory; he said more research is needed. 
Other researchers are examining the Internet with different results. Rutgers's
Katz and colleague Philip Aspden, executive director of the Center for Research
on the Information Society, surveyed 2,500 Internet users and found no evidence
of social withdrawal: Online participants are no less likely to join religious,
leisure or community organizations than people who aren't online, the research
indicated. 
Hoffman and partner Tom Novak at Vanderbilt University's Project 2000 have
collaborated with researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and
others, and focus in part on consumers and what they find compelling in
electronic commerce. Their research, too, suggests that many Web users consider
being online to be both positive and enriching, leading to a satisfying mental
state known as "flow." 
No one yet knows where various threads of research will lead, and Carnegie
Mellon's Scherlis warns against reducing scientific results like his to a
"bumper sticker" notion that the Internet is depressing or somehow dangerous
and should therefore be controlled or restricted. The findings "should in no
way give anybody an excuse to delay bringing the Internet into the home or into
the schools or into the inner city -- or anywhere else for that matter," he
said. 
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company