The internet and friendship
About a year ago I attended a lecture at LSE — part of their free public lecture series that I attend too infrequently. The topic of that lecture was isolation and the Internet. The thrust of the lecture is that all the evidence — all of it — points not towards the Internet making more people more isolated, but towards the improved maintenance of one’s desired level of socialization. In other words, sure — if you want to isolate yourself, the Internet will allow it. But if you are a naturally socially person, the Internet will facilitate it.
In other words, worries that the Internet causes isolation and the degradation of social skills are not just exaggerated, they are unfounded.
This did not come as a surprise, because ten years ago I was studying similar topics as part of my undergraduate degree. At the time the Internet was young and there were no firm numbers to look at. But the worry that this new technology would cause a degradation of social skills already existed and was quite palpable. And all the (admittedly anecdotal) evidence — at least, the portion that had basis in fact — pointed towards a conclusion that the Internet was just another technology that could be used for communicating. Like any such tool, people who use it to communicate enhance their social connections by doing so, rather than degrading them.
At that lecture, a year ago, it was nice to see that the studies (and meta-studies, which combine data from multiple studies to look for patterns that might not be visible in the smaller populations) confirming the conclusions I had drawn ten years earlier. In fact, I am not certain how anybody approaching the subject with an academic mindset could have seen it any other way — but by no means does that mean that the numbers would bear that out.
With all this in the background, I was somewhat surprised to read this news story a few weeks ago (found via Mashable) declaring that this had been discovered by a survey by the Pew group — a “think tank” that conducts random phone surveys. First the Mashable headline does it for me: “MYTH BUSTED”, it declares in all caps.
Further, the introduction to the Pew Survey itself just gets my goat:
This Pew Internet Personal Networks and Community survey is the first ever that examines the role of the internet and cell phones in the way that people interact with those in their core social network. Our key findings challenge previous research and commonplace fears about the harmful social impact of new technology
This is blatantly false. The research has been saying the same thing since I first started reading it a decade ago. Academics have been performing surveys and studies on the subject for years, and have already drawn the same conclusions.
The Pew survey breaks no new ground. As a “think tank” and common go-to source for reporters, they clearly generate more buzz than the people who have been slogging this out for the last fifteen years to determine the real impact that these relatively new technologies have on our social interactions.
And it pisses me off to no end to see them open with such blatant intellectual dishonesty (or ignorance) by claiming that their findings fly in the face of previous research. Nobody needs an intellectually dishonest think tank, Pew. Nobody.
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As an aside, I have tried and failed to find a podcast, video or transcript of the lecture in question. However, LSE does provide videos, podcasts and transcripts from lectures in their public lecture series. I think they’re fantastic — particularly the podcasts, if there have not been too many visual aids.
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