Is The Web
Isolating You?
Stanford Study Says
"Yes"
By Fred Langa
May 22, 2000
It made headlines several weeks ago:
Researchers at Stanford University's SIQSS (Stanford
Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society)
conducted a national survey of Web users that led the
researchers to the following conclusions:
"The more hours people use the
Internet, the less time they spend with real human
beings. ... The Internet could be the ultimate
isolating technology that reduces our participation in
communities even more than television did. ... This is
an early trend that, as a society, we really need to
monitor carefully."
The study was conducted at the end
of last year and used information provided by 2,689
households that were enlisted by a random telephone
survey and given a free WebTV and free Internet
access. In an effort to filter out
"contamination" caused by the fact that the
survey was itself Web-based, the final results were
drawn only from among those participants who already
had some form of Internet access at home or work prior
to the survey (See http://www.stanford.edu/group/siqss/).
The study has all the normal
trappings of objectivity and statistical validity, but
to me, it appears the researchers' interpretation of
the results is rooted in a subtle, but distinct
anti-Web/anti-tech bias. This is especially disturbing
in light of the wide play the survey got in the
national media.
Let me pick one glaring example: the
study trumpets that 26 percent of Internet users
report they spend less time talking with family and
friends on the phone -- clearly, a symptom of
increasing social isolation, right?
But the same study shows that by far
the most common Internet activity is sending and
receiving e-mail. Amazingly, nowhere in the study did
I find anything that recognized what is, to me, the
obvious causal link: E-mail simply has replaced the
phone for many routine types of communication. (As my
daughter would say, duh!) The interpersonal
interaction still takes place; it's just shifted from
one medium to another.
But the researchers seem to have
missed that. Worse, they appear to regard e-mail as a
socially inferior medium. For example, in a press
release about the study, one researcher says,
"E-mail is a way to stay in touch, but you can't
share a coffee or a beer with somebody on e-mail or
give them a hug."
OK. But you can't share a coffee or
a beer or a hug by telephone, either. So, wouldn't it
stand to reason that the more time we spend on the
phone, the more socially isolated we are? (Huh?) And
you know, you also can't share a coffee or a beer or a
hug by snail mail, so every time you send someone a
card or a letter, you're merely increasing your social
isolation, right?
What's Wrong With This Thinking?
Clearly, there's something wrong
with this thinking, and I think the clue to what the
flaw is can be found in the same press release where
one of the researchers says, "For the most part,
the Internet is an individual activity."
But the study says that e-mail is
the No.1 Internet activity. That's
"individual" only if you see one end of the
connection, or only if you somehow come to believe
that in communicating online, you're interacting with
your computer rather than with your correspondents.
By the same logic, if you talk on
the phone, you're really just interacting with a
speaker and microphone and some wires, right? Oh wait,
that can't be right--- as we saw above, "talking
with family and friends on the phone" is a good
thing, the loss of which represents increasing social
isolation. So, by the weird logic of this research
paper, communication by older technology like the
phone is socially connecting, but communication by a
newer technology -- e-mail --is socially isolating.
I believe that strange distinction
makes sense only when you view this subject through
the strong, distorting lens of personal bias: Some
people are inherently "touchy-feely" and
simply can't connect with someone unless they're face
to face, and preferably in physical contact. Other
people can't feel connected unless they can at least
hear another's voice. To these people, e-mail will
always come up short.
I'll be the first to admit that
there are times when there's no substitute for the
touch or voice of a friend or loved one. But many
people, especially those comfortable with the written
word, have no trouble maintaining social connections
by e-mail.
In fact, I think e-mail can be the
very antithesis of isolating. If a friend sends me,
say, a small joke by e-mail -- a joke too small to
warrant a phone call or a face-to-face meeting -- I
can smile and feel good at being thought of. It's
communication that otherwise would not have happened,
and adds to the totality of social connectedness
rather than detracts from it.
This seems obvious to me. People
gravitate to the medium that works best for their
needs. For touchy-feely people, e-mail is lousy. But
for others, e-mail actually increases and enhances
communication and connectedness. The fact that e-mail
is the No. 1 online activity is concrete evidence that
there's a huge number of people who feel likewise.
(And that says nothing of other hugely popular
Internet-based forms of communication such as instant
messaging and chat rooms.)
Yes, e-mail is different from
face-to-face communication or the telephone or other
media. As a neutral statement, that's fine. But it
gets scary when a social scientist engaged in the
"Quantitative Study of Society" assigns
qualitative value judgments to communication media. In
effect: "Lots of phone calls mean you're socially
interconnected; lots of e-mail means you're socially
isolated, and part of a trend that society 'must
monitor carefully.'
Connectedness vs. Isolation
Socially speaking,
"connectedness" and "isolation"
are both relative and subjective terms.
Amazingly, the researchers never
asked the survey participants if they themselves felt
more or less connected. They never asked if
participants felt more or less isolated or if their
lives had improved or deteriorated or if other family
members or friends had complained or even commented on
the users' supposed isolation or connectedness.
Instead, the researchers asked ostensibly neutral
questions and then inferred the degree of
connectedness or isolation according to an
unspecified, and in my opinion, biased scale.
That flaw in the study can't be
rectified, but perhaps it can be illuminated.
Consider: Byte readers have been online longer than
almost any other group I know, stretching back to the
early days of ARPAnet.
A decade ago, before most people had even heard of the
Internet, Byte's commercial online system (BIX) was
among the very first to have full interconnectivity
between its e-mail system and standard Internet
e-mail.
Surely, if social isolation and
unconnectedness is a problem, it would have shown up
in this sample -- Byte readers -- sooner and stronger
than in the public at large.
So, in an admittedly anecdotal and
nonscientific way, let me ask you: Has the Internet
and Web enhanced or detracted from the social
connectedness of your life? Does the online world make
you feel more isolated, or less? Does it strengthen
the social fabric of your life, or weaken it? Do you
have e-mail friends whom you never (or rarely) meet in
person? If so, are these friendships inferior to ones
that rely more on face-to-face meetings?
©
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Related Links:
SIQSS
Internet Study
Survey
Raises Issue Of Isolated Web Users
Net
User Study Sure To Set Off Fireworks About Social
Isolation
Social
and Public-Policy Internet Research
The
Sociable Web (An MIT experiment at making Web
pages social environments)
Ethical,
Legal And Social Issues (in IT)
Personal
And Social Impacts Of Going On-Line
You can contact Fred
at fred@langa.com
or via his website at http://www.langa.com.
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columns, visit the Monitor
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