CyberProzac

[Steve]

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 






* * * * * * * * * * * * * *  From the Listowner  * * * * * * * * * * * *
.	To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to:
majordomo at scn.org		In the body of the message, type:
unsubscribe scn
END