A rchive Date
[ 05-06-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ WWW ]
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[http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/columns/modemdriver/docs/dp021600.htm
Net user study sure to set off fireworks about social isolation
BY DAVID PLOTNIKOFF
Mercury News Staff Columnist
THERE are precious few things we can really count on in this wired world. One of them is a steady stream of learned studies that purport to show the precise length, girth or blood-pressure of the collective Internet beast.
Today, two Stanford researchers will release a user survey that concludes all that online time is bringing an unforeseen set of societal ills home to roost. The preliminary findings of the study by Stanford political science Professor Norman Nie and visiting Professor Lutz Erbring of the Free University of Berlin portray the Internet as an insidiously anti-human technology, one that imposes a hidden toll of social isolation on its users.
That incendiary conclusion and the unusual methodology behind the survey virtually guarantee that it will be an object of some contention among Internet academics and market research professionals. The survey of 4,113 U.S. adults, conducted under the auspices of the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society, has yet to be published in a scholarly journal for peer-review.
In a telephone interview from his Stanford office Tuesday, Nie characterized his study as the first of its kind to assess the social impact of Internet use. Nie, who spent 30 years at University of Chicago before coming to Stanford two years ago to direct the institute, seemed either unaware or dismissive of the body of research which preceded his effort - seven years of surveys by at least a dozen academic and commercial sources.
For what it's worth, others in the field, when shown a pre-publication draft summary, were equally dismissive of Nie's work: ``There's nothing new about it at all,'' said James McQuivey, a research director for Forrester Research.
Many of the topics - hours spent online, percent of users on the Net for specific tasks such as auctions or chat, amount of time being taken away from the consumption of television and newspapers - had been the subject of previous studies. Nie's and Erbring's contention that Internet use leads to increased social isolation is the one memorable nugget that will be fought over.
The conclusions are based on the results from just three questions on social isolation. Thirteen percent of ``regular'' Internet users (those spending five or more hours per week online) reported spending less time with friends and family. Eight percent said they were attending fewer social events. And 26 percent said they were talking less to friends and family on the phone.
Vanderbilt University business Professor Donna Hoffman, co-director of the school's Electronic Commerce Research Laboratory, is wary of Nie's conclusions. ``He suggests there's going to be less community, but it's not clear he's really looked at how the Internet facilitates communication,'' said Hoffman. ``For example, the fact that people may be talking to friends and family less on the phone doesn't mean they're communicating less.''
As for that 26 percent who spent less time on the phone, could there be a corresponding increase in e-mail to friends and family?
``Obviously, people are spending a lot of time with e-mail,'' Nie continued. ``Are there great correspondences being created, ala the great 19th century diarists? I doubt it. But even if they are, the long hours that you're spending composing those letters in front of that device are hours not being spent with another human being. I think that if you read all the sociological literature on the crisis of modernity, it's all about the breaking of ligatures, of ties between human beings. First the extended family goes, then the neighborhood goes, then the nuclear family goes . . .''
Nie seems convinced that the answers to those three questions constitute proof that there's a much greater threat waiting out there in the ether. ``Just look at the sheer number of hours that people spend by themselves. I think that that's a huge issue we need to monitor,'' he said. ``The Internet could be the ultimate isolating technology that further reduces our participation in communities even more than television.''
Never mind that the vast majority of his respondents did not report increased social isolation. (Eighty-seven percent of the regular Net users did not spend less time with family and 92 percent did not attend fewer social events.) Nie feels it's inevitable that the problems he sees today will grow with the online population. ``Given the early stages that we're at here, I think the data are pretty clear on the subject,'' he said. ``It's like looking at the tin lizzies rolling down the street and the streets getting rutted and muddy and saying to yourself `someday traffic's going to be a big problem.' ''
Aside from disagreements over the study's conclusions, other researchers will probably give a great deal of scrutiny to its unorthodox methodology. The survey was conducted for the institute by InterSurvey, a Net-based polling company co-founded by Nie. InterSurvey, which counts Stanford University among its investors, has built a 35,000 member, demographically weighted pool of potential respondents based on traditional methods - random-dialed phone searches and mail follow-ups. Every household in this pool is given free Internet access and Web TV hardware. In exchange the participants agree to answer a regular battery of questions via the Net. Nie characterizes the system as being just as statistically accurate as a traditional telephone survey based on the same such pool composition.
One may well ask: How can any survey conducted solely via the Net properly represent both Internet users and non-users? Some critics would assert that by providing the online access and the hardware, Nie's company has prompted behavior that otherwise wouldn't exist.
Nie says that's not the case. The former non-users who were made into users by the the WebTV connection appear in the current study only for demographic comparison purposes. (They were counted as non-users for the purpose of establishing correlations between Internet use and age, gender, education and other factors.) Nie said only those respondents who'd been on the Net prior to being recruited were counted as users when it came to studying actual Net behavior.
Hoffman wondered if Nie's new converts to the wired world can really be representative of non-users. ``I'm concerned about bias introduced by calling up people who are non-users who agree to participate because they're given a computer or set-top box,'' she said. ``Those are people who you could hypothesize were likely to go online anyway or were most interested in being online. So it's not really a fair comparison.''
You can evaluate the original materials yourself by pointing a Web browser at www.stanford.edu/group/siqss.
Perhaps the best thing to come of the tempest in a set-top box will be a more thorough discussion of social isolation.
As for this idea that the Net may be an anti-community, everything I've read, everything I've known from experience these past few years tells me it's an outragous contention that's utterly without merit, statistical or otherwise.
David Plotnikoff writes about the wired life for the San Jose Mercury News. Contact him at plotnikoff@sjmercury.com or (408) 920-5867. On the Web, dial www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/columns/modemdriver/
 World Fact Book (CIA)]]
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