This month we’ve seen a lot of interesting talk about different technologies and how they affect teens here at the YALSA blog. Now that we’re wrapping things up, I thought it might be interesting to pull back a little and look at the larger social effect of the Internet on society. There are two reports by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in particular that can tell us how the Internet has changed our social lives.
A 2006 study published in the American Sociological Review contented that over the previous 20 years, Americans had become more socially isolated as the number of people with whom they discussed things declined and the diversity of those groups of people decreased.
While a 2009 Pew Research Center report corroborated some of the findings of the 2006 study, it also cast some of the findings of that study in doubt. Here are some of their findings:
- It was true that “an increasing number of Americans have no one with whom they can discuss important matters, but that “compared to 1985, there has been a small-to-modest change, rather than a large drop in the number of people who report that they have no one with whom they can discuss important matters.” In fact, 12% of subjects said they didn’t have such a person, but only 6% of adults said they had no one “especially significant” in their lives.
- Again, it’s true that the size of core discussion networks has declined–by about 1/3, or about one person. And diversity had declined as well, with discussion networks now mostly centered around family members.
- However! The Pew study determined that these shrinking, homogenizing social networks weren’t due to mobile phone use. Having a mobile phone–as well as using the Internet for sharing digital photos and for IMing–was correlated with having a large discussion network, and Internet users were more likely to discuss things with non-family and were less likely to rely exclusively on spouses or partners for discussion. Additionally, blogging was linked with a 95% higher likelihood of having a discussion partner of a different race.
- Face-to-face communication is still the most common means of having contact with people in our discussion networks. Mobile phones come in second; texting and landline phones tied for third; email, IM, and social networking websites came next (in that order); and sending cards and letters was the least frequent method of communication.
- Owners of a mobile phone, people who used the Internet frequently at work, and bloggers were more likely to belong to some sort of “local voluntary group,” which includes things like neighborhood associations, sports leagues, youth groups, and church or social clubs.
- And lest you think Internet users are just holed up at home, the report also found that Internet users were 42% more likely to visit a public park or plaza than non-users, and were 45% more likely to visit a coffee shop or cafe. Being a blogger made you even more likely to visit a public park.
- Those who use the Internet and use a social networking website had social networks that were about 20% more diverse than non-Internet users.
So in short, the average American does have fewer peop
Add a Comment