>Carnegie Mellon Study Reveals Negative Potential of Heavy Internet Use
>on Emotional Well Being...
>
>Did it bother to find out the effects on people who were already
>socially isolated?
I think it just mostly studied people who had just gotten Internet service.
(see below) Those doing the study actually set it up expecting to find just
the opposite--that's why the results surprised them, and their sponsers, so
much.
Here's the New York Times' take on the story:
-Prof. Tim
----------------------------------------------------
>
> Researchers Find Sad, Lonely World in Cyberspace
>
> Amy Harmon
> NY Times 8/30/98
>
>
> In the first concentrated study of the social and psychological
> effects of Internet use at home, researchers at Carnegie Mellon
> University have found that people who spend even a few hours a week
> online experience higher levels of depression and loneliness than
> they would have if they used the computer network less frequently.
>
> Those participants who were lonelier and more depressed at the start
> of the two-year study, as determined by a standard questionnaire
> administered to all the subjects, were not more likely to use the
> Internet. Instead, Internet use itself appeared to cause a decline
> in psychological well-being, the researchers said.
>
> The results of the $1.5 million project ran completely contrary to
> expectations of the social scientists who designed it and to many of
> the organizations that financed the study. These included technology
> companies like Intel Corp., Hewlett Packard, AT&T Research and Apple
> Computer, as well as the National Science Foundation.
>
> "We were shocked by the findings, because they are counterintuitive
> to what we know about how socially the Internet is being used," said
> Robert Kraut, a social psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon's
> Human Computer Interaction Institute. "We are not talking here about
> the extremes. These were normal adults and their families, and on
> average, for those who used the Internet most, things got worse."
>
> The Internet has been praised as superior to television and other
> "passive" media because it allows users to choose the kind of
> information they want to receive, and often, to respond actively to
> it in the form of e-mail exchanges with other users, chat rooms or
> electronic bulletin board postings.
>
> Research on the effects of watching television indicates that it
> tends to reduce social involvement. But the new study, titled
> "HomeNet," suggests that the interactive medium may be no more
> socially healthy than older mass media. It also raises troubling
> questions about the nature of "virtual" communication and the
> disembodied relationships that are often formed in the vacuum of
> cyberspace.
>
> Participants in the study used inherently social features like
> e-mail and Internet chat more than they used passive information
> gathering like reading or watching videos. But they reported a
> decline in interaction with family members and a reduction in their
> circles of friends that directly corresponded to the amount of time
> they spent online.
>
> At the beginning and end of the two-year study, the subjects were
> asked to agree or disagree with statements like "I felt everything I
> did was an effort," and "I enjoyed life" and "I can find
> companionship when I want it." They were also asked to estimate how
> many minutes each day they spent with each member of their family
> and to quantify their social circle. Many of these are standard
> questions in tests used to determine psychological health.
>
> For the duration of the study, the subjects' use of the Internet was
> recorded. For the purposes of this study, depression and loneliness
> were measured independently, and each subject was rated on a
> subjective scale. In measuring depression, the responses were
> plotted on a scale of 0 to 3, with 0 being the least depressed and 3
> being the most depressed. Loneliness was plotted on a scale of 1 to
> 5.
>
> By the end of the study, the researchers found that one hour a week
> on the Internet led, on average, to an increase of .03, or 1
> percent, on the depression scale, a loss of 2.7 members of the
> subject's social circle, which averaged 66 people, and an increase of
> .02, or four-tenths of 1 percent, on the loneliness scale.
>
> The subjects exhibited wide variations in all three measured
> effects, and while the net effects were not large, they were
> statistically significant in demonstrating deterioration of social
> and psychological life, Kraut said.
>
> Based on these data, the researchers hypothesize that relationships
> maintained over long distances without face-to-face contact
> ultimately do not provide the kind of support and reciprocity that
> typically contribute to a sense of psychological security and
> happiness, like being available to baby-sit in a pinch for a friend,
> or to grab a cup of coffee.
>
> "Our hypothesis is there are more cases where you're building
> shallow relationships, leading to an overall decline in feeling of
> connection to other people," Kraut said.
>
> The study tracked the behavior of 169 participants in the Pittsburgh
> area who were selected from four schools and community groups. Half
> the group was measured through two years of Internet use, and the
> other half for one year. The findings will be published this week by
> The American Psychologist, the peer-reviewed monthly journal of the
> American Psychological Association.
>
> Because the study participants were not randomly selected, it is
> unclear how the findings apply to the general population. It is also
> conceivable that some unmeasured factor caused simultaneous
> increases in use of the Internet and decline in normal levels of
> social involvement. Moreover, the effect of Internet use varied
> depending on an individual's life patterns and type of use.
> Researchers said that people who were isolated because of their
> geography or work shifts might have benefited socially from Internet
> use.
>
> Even so, several social scientists familiar with the study vouched
> for its credibility and predicted that the findings would probably
> touch off a national debate over how public policy on the Internet
> should evolve and how the technology itself might be shaped to yield
> more beneficial effects.
>
> "They did an extremely careful scientific study, and it's not a
> result that's easily ignored," said Tora Bikson, a senior scientist
> at Rand, the research institution. Based in part on previous studies
> that focused on how local communities like Santa Monica, Calif.,
> used computer networks to enhance civic participation, Rand has
> recommended that the federal government provide e-mail access to all
> Americans.
>
> "It's not clear what the underlying psychological explanation is,"
> Ms. Bikson said of the study. "Is it because people give up
> day-to-day contact and then find themselves depressed? Or are they
> exposed to the broader world of Internet and then wonder, 'What am I
> doing here in Pittsburgh?' Maybe your comparison standard changes.
> I'd like to see this replicated on a larger scale. Then I'd really
> worry."
>
> Christine Riley, a psychologist at Intel Corp., the giant chip
> manufacturer that was among the sponsors of the study, said she was
> surprised by the results but did not consider the research
> definitive.
>
> "For us, the point is there was really no information on this
> before," Ms. Riley said. "But it's important to remember this is not
> about the technology, per se; it's about how it is used. It really
> points to the need for considering social factors in terms of how
> you design applications and services for technology."
>
> The Carnegie Mellon team -- which included Sara Kiesler, a social
> psychologist who helped pioneer the study of human interaction over
> computer networks; Tridas Mukophadhyay, a professor at the graduate
> business school who has examined computer mediated communication in
> the workplace; and William Scherlis, a research scientist in
> computer science -- stressed that the negative effects of Internet
> use that they found were not inevitable.
>
> For example, the main focus of Internet use in schools has been
> gathering information and getting in touch with people from far-away
> places. But the research suggests that maintaining social ties with
> people in close physical proximity could be more psychologically
> healthy.
>
> "More intense development and deployment of services that support
> pre-existing communities and strong relationships should be
> encouraged," the researchers write in their forthcoming article.
> "Government efforts to wire the nation's schools, for example,
> should consider online homework sessions for students rather than
> just online reference works."
>
> At a time when Internet use is expanding rapidly -- nearly 70
> million adult Americans are on line, according to Nielsen Media
> Research -- social critics say the technology could exacerbate the
> fragmentation of U.S. society or help to fuse it, depending on how it
> is used.
>
> "There are two things the Internet can turn out to be, and we don't
> know yet which it's going to be," said Robert Putnam, a political
> scientist at Harvard University whose forthcoming book, "Bowling
> Alone," which is to be published next year by Simon & Schuster,
> chronicles the alienation of Americans from each other since the
> 1960s. "The fact that I'm able to communicate daily with my
> collaborators in Germany and Japan makes me more efficient, but
> there are a lot of things it can't do, like bring me chicken soup."
>
> Putnam added, "The question is how can you push computer mediated
> communication in a direction that would make it more community
> friendly."
>
> Perhaps paradoxically, several participants in the Internet study
> expressed surprise when they were informed of the study's
> conclusions by a reporter.
>
> "For me it's been the opposite of depression; it's been a way of
> being connected," said Rabbi Alvin Berkun, who used the Internet for
> a few hours a week to read The Jerusalem Post and communicate with
> other rabbis across the country.
>
> But Berkun said his wife did not share his enthusiasm for the
> medium. "She does sometimes resent when I go and hook up," he said,
> adding after a pause, "I guess I am away from where my family is
> while I'm on the computer." Another possibility is that the natural
> human preference for face-to-face communication may provide a
> self-correcting mechanism to the technology that tries to cross it.
>
> The rabbi's daughter, Rebecca, 17, said she had spent a fair amount
> of time in teen-age chat rooms at the beginning of the survey in
> 1995.
>
> "I can see how people would get depressed," Ms. Berkun said. "When
> we first got it, I would be on for an hour a day or more. But I found
> it was the same type of people, the same type of things being said.
> It got kind of old."
>
> Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
>
>
>