Internet to Blame for Lack of Close Friends 361
Anonymous Coward writes "Duke and University of Arizona researchers are citing the Internet as one of the main contributing factors to a shrinking of social networks among Americans. People say they have fewer people they can talk to about important stuff, even if they are talking to lots more people from all over the place about unimportant stuff online."
Did they consider (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Did they consider (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Did they consider (Score:5, Funny)
What are you talking about? I've got 89,402,390 people in my social network! This internet thing is great!
Re:Did they consider (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Did they consider (Score:4, Funny)
Internet to close for lack of friends to blame (Score:2)
I live here... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I live here... (Score:2)
Re:Did they consider (Score:5, Insightful)
I could never relate to most locals, really. The best friends I have are those I've met online. A few have moved nearby since and I see them often in real-life.
I don't think the Internet is responsible for a *lack* of close friends.. Just a larger pool of potential friends where you end up meeting much better matches, even if they are physically farther away.
However, the folks I've met on the 'net aren't any less my friends than folks I've met in person.
-Z
But therein lies the rub (Score:5, Insightful)
Therein lies the rub.
Leaving aside all the things that friends do for you that require physical presence (e.g. visit you in the hospital after the car accident, feed your pet iguana while you're on vacation), it means that more than ever, birds of a feather flock together.
Friendship used to be 50% affinity and 50% propinquity. People used to have some friends who were mostly affinity (my friends I see at the monthly meeting of the the local chapter of the Christian Republican Golfers )and some friends mostly by propinquity (my next door neighbor, who's a lesbian Democrat labor activist and used her trusty swiss army knife to get my broken down car started when I was running late for the big job interview).
Being friends with people who you couldn't relate to beforehand broadens your mind in the way that mere access to the wealth of information the Internet provides can't. It's all too easy to be like a person in a exotic foreign bazaar who heads right to the McDonald's for a Big Mac. Pretty soon your circle of friends contracts until you and your asscoiates in the Virtual Jihadist club reinforce each other in a very peculiar and narrow minded world view. You no longer have people who have both conservative Christian Republicans for friends and liberal gay Democrats. We stick to our golf buddies or fellow lesbian separatists.
Re:But therein lies the rub (Score:4, Insightful)
This is an excellent point that continually is missed by most everyone. Not only has increased use of the internet for socializatoin lead to a decrease in the quality of friendships, it's made it more difficult to access to wider viewpoints. Most of the comments thus far on this story miss the point that it isn't contact with others that is under analysis, it's the quality of the relationship. For those of you shrugging off this news with the attitude that you've got more and better friends thanks to the internet, ask yourself how many of those friends you can talk about serious problems with. How many of them provide the emotional support that we depend on in extreme situations? I'm not at all surprised that the article reports that families are becoming the only contact of this caliber.
But above and beyond that, the internet, in all of its glory, its very susceptible to becoming an unintentional and unrecognized echo chamber. It's all too easy to spend time on sites that have information that conforms and confirms our cherished beliefs and attitudes. People have to make an effort to read about a variety of viewpoints, but that doesn't happen as much as it ideally would. There are associated risks of these echoes building up and more and more issues become polarized as a result as well.
I'm not saying that the internet is bad or that we need to find a way to "fix" this problem. But I do think that these trends are real and have real effects on the meatspace society we inhabit as well. For the most part, it is just going to result in a change, neither really better or worse, just different. But it may have a measurable, or at least significant, impact on people, either as communities or on an individual level, be it the fraying of civic ties or simply not having anyone to turn to in times of crisis and need.
Re:But therein lies the rub (Score:3, Informative)
Re:But therein lies the rub (Score:3)
I agree perfectly. Also, Microsoft has never released a product worth using, Linux is the best thing slnce sliced bread, and SCO, RIAA and Sony are worse than raping puppies and drowning children - or was that the other way around?
it's just laziness (Score:5, Insightful)
Enter MySpace. Now if you want to know what your friends are doing, you just look at your event invites. If you don't want to go, there's no need to make excuses over the phone. Just say you forgot to look. You don't have the benefit of that friend pulling your leg telling you it just might be fun. It's easy to miss out on things this way. But it's SO much less of a hassle, right?
The flow of information has gone from push to pull. You can now look up only what you want to see and ignore everything else. Even searches about heated topics like war, religion, etc - the result of your search depends on how you perform it. People aren't often challenged by new and opposing information. They have enough online friends that share their opinions. When you talk to people in the real world about the same subjects, you are getting a somewhat random mix of opinions. You risk having to defend your view and even having to change it. Online friends are easier to deal with because you've pre-screened them based on their interests.
Look at radio. It used to be that we were given a set of songs that were repeated over and over until we liked them or tuned out. The only way to hear new music was to go - gasp - OUT to a bar or club. Now we can download just the songs we want, or check Pandora for recommendations.
My point is that people are lazy. It's natural to look for the path of least resistance. Often times, the internet is that path. The internet only got as popular as it did because of this. It's not a chicken-egg thing. People created the internet. We only have ourselves to blame for the isolation. We asked for it.
Is it really such a bad thing? We look back fondly on a time before the internet. We think that time was wonderful because it no longer exists. We remember study groups at the library and honestly think they are better than independent research online. But we forget how interaction with others often slows down our individual progress. You're only as strong as the weakest link. If the collective knowledge of your own pool of friends is all you had, would you know as much as you know now? Or is it that we are starting to believe that knowledge isn't all it's cracked up to be? What can you do with it when you are all alone?
Maybe it is better for people to help each other, to strengthen the weakest link instead of tossing him overboard as dead weight. Sure, that's better for society. But not for the individual. What we are seeing now is the struggle between the two. At the moment the individual is the one who is winning out, and that is why Americans are perceived as shallow and selfish.
Re:it's just laziness (Score:5, Insightful)
Mars (Score:3, Interesting)
On Mars, people seek what is new and different. Martians enjoy exploring both sides of an argument, and
Re:it's just laziness (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure why Americans in particular are shallow and selfish as the internet is catching on comparatively slow here. If the article premise is true, and the internet is tearing apart human social fabrics, then you'd think Koreans or Chinese would be the most shallow and selfish. Not something I've personally experienced
To be slightly polemic (and borrowed slightly from Asimov), if you extropolate technological advancement to the end state, where anything can be had, what would you consider to be utopia? Some people envision the perpetual party state, having fun with friends and living closely with their peers, bound together by social laws and manners. Others might envision complete self-sufficiency, the anti-society, with no undesired external contacts and absolute freedom. I'm not sure that anything is wrong with either end state, we could site pro's and con's to either one, I personally favor the latter.
Re:Did they consider (Score:3)
This is actually a consequence of a myriad of reasons, one of which is closely related to the Internet: complete partial attention. We're constantly interrupted---by e-mail, IM, cellphones, blueberries, all those distractions---that we don't pay any attention to anyone at all. Because of this, people in general a
I've said it before... (Score:5, Funny)
Or the blindingly obviously false? (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine a beowulf cluster of friends. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Imagine a beowulf cluster of friends. (Score:5, Funny)
You know what would even be cooler?? If one of those friends was a girl.
Re:Imagine a beowulf cluster of friends. (Score:2)
Oh come on, be realistic.
Re:Imagine a beowulf cluster of friends. (Score:3, Funny)
Never, under ANY circumstances, admit to being female.
Re:Imagine a beowulf cluster of friends. (Score:4, Funny)
Pics?
Two (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Two (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Two (Score:3, Funny)
That would quickly turn into a Beowolf cluster-fuck. (first one way then the other)
Well (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think just knowing people by the net and never meeting them is healthy. You need human to human interaction.
Ob. bash quote (Score:4, Funny)
<H0ley> What ever happened to getting to know people and dates and crap.
<H0ley> Screw this profile crap.
<H0ley> Everyone is trying to profile each other.
<H0ley> Freaking meat-markets.
<L4m3r> Dogs leave piles of crap for each other. We have Myspace.
stuff that matters? (Score:3, Informative)
Flipside (Score:2, Interesting)
Alienation (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Alienation (Score:5, Interesting)
If there's a culprit to be found in population patterns and geographic movements, it's not so much in urbanization (most cities have been losing people over the last few decades) -- as in suburbanization -- a pattern of life which is characterized by atomization and long commute times, leading Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone) speaks of a "sprawl civic penalty".
Re:Alienation (Score:4, Insightful)
My own city of Baltimore is a real case in point. Our neighborhood was historically made up of blue-collar workers who worked on the nearby waterfront in assorted canneries and maritime occupations. It's situated between the well-known neighborhood of Fells Point to the west, and a solidly ethnic Greek neighborhood to its east. Housing prices have skyrocketed here. Old, small rowhouses are purchased and promptly demolished in order to build the urban version of the McMansion--a house that sits on a rowhouse footprint and goes straight up, sometimes for four or five stories. (Some new homes have elevators.)
The result is a sort of urban bedroom community. The streets, shops, corner stores, bars, and restaurants are deserted during working hours. No one is out. There are no children to speak of. It doesn't foster social networking. I don't know either of my next-door neighbors, nor do I know the people in back (whose McMansions tower over and dwarf my traditional rowhouse back garden). The best way to get to know people here is to own a dog. You walk to the dog park and can become acquainted with your fellow home-office workers and the few young mothers and retirees still left here.
This is happening in neighborhoods all over town, including the "artists' colony" area where loft space used to be cheap but is now beyond the reach of the young artists. Re-gentrified urban neighborhoods are ghost towns by day and automobile-congested rolling parking lots by night. All the ills and isolation of the suburbs have followed the middle class folk who are moving back into town.
Re:Alienation (Score:2)
Re:Alienation (Score:5, Insightful)
It used to be that parents let their kids go out and actually ROAM the neighborhood. I remember twenty-plus years ago, I'd come in for lunch, then go back outside and run around with my friends and sometimes my parents wouldn't see me until dinnertime, or even later. I look around the neighborhood where I live today, and only the latino kids get that sort of free rein anymore. I guess the Spanish channel's news is less horrifying. I know it all seems to have started about the early-to-mid 80's, with the fake scares about razors in apples on Halloween (a story pushed by crazy anti-halloween loons, who were afraid that Satan was coming for their children; a story they pushed right onto the front pages) and the rise of the aforementioned hysteria about the pedophiles in the woodwork.
As the kids of that age have grown up, it's not surprising they've got a smaller circle of friends, and hey, that all started about the time the internet did!
I firmly believe that the greatest problem in the world today (and in the United States most of all) is fear. It's the stark terror, deep inside, that causes people to argue that placing sensible restrictions on possible abuse of government power is going to cause crazed muslamoid islamobogeymen to kill people by the millions; it's what lies behind both sides of the Israel/Palestine conflict; it's what fuels the repressive governments in North Korea and Iran; in a thousand ways, in a thousand parts of the world, it's fear that destroys us.
- mantar
Stop passing the buck (Score:5, Insightful)
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
Re:Stop passing the buck (Score:2)
I have more close friends (Score:3, Informative)
I don't use MySpace, I don't participate in social networking sites, yet I've still managed to encounter other minds like mine; minds I can learn from, and minds I can teach. Having an online life doesn't preclude me from having an offline life, and indeed they supplement each other.
Finally, the Internet has greatly facilitated maintaining offline friendships that would have dissolved for geographic reasons. These friendships have moved online, and if not for the Internet, we might write a letter once a month or so. Instead I talk to these people daily. We also game together, so on a typical Friday night, a half dozen of my real life (offline) friends and I meet up and slay Onyxia or run Molten Core together when it would be logistically infeasible for us to meet in person.
Different in Norway, perhaps (Score:2)
Re:Different in Norway, perhaps (Score:2)
Yeah, in the US we call that "jail".
Actually I'm just envious because most of the people I've met on the Internet are either looking for help with debugging some piece of code I touched ten years ago, or Brazillians looking for Orkut hookups, or both. I've never met any of these people face to face. That would be a nice change. As long as beer and pot weren't required.
Re:Different in Norway, perhaps (Score:2)
Internet + reality TV = ? (Score:2)
What else would you expect, given that most people access reality through a computer or TV screen? Why ask a person when you can ask [ask.com] a computer? Why deal with ordinary people in your neighborhood when you can risklessly gape at people who are much more beautiful [cnn.com] or who lead more exciting [theocshow.com] or important [nbc.com] lives, or perhaps take comfort in the fact that you can always find abundant reinforcement [slashdot.org] for your choices online?
And here I am, typing this, while my kids are playing
I work in teh Internets .... (Score:2)
No bath necessary.
Ex-friends say it's because of how bad I smell you insensitive clod!
Internet, yes, but other factors too. (Score:5, Insightful)
Friends and would-be lovers alike are more and more forming and maintaining friendships on the basis of "What is this person doing for me right now?"
If someone isn't making them a profit, or is (gasp) taking their time or effort without a mechanically measurable payoff of some kind, people are only too ready these days to "kick them to the curb" and look for friends who are profitable or represent a measurable gain of some kind, whether in prestige or job prospects or exclusive memberships or exploitable expertise/skills.
This mentality of "everything has a price and can be calculated as a cost-benefit" has already ruled American material life for years and led to a kind of spiritual bankruptcy that leads to cults, sappy new-ageism, under/overeducation, and other strange social pathologies and now it is polluting our social lives as well.
When everyone is busy being a self-interested climber in their relationships, is is any wonder that nobody seems to be able to find non-selfish-climber friends? When everyone is busy sensing that they are entitled to their opinion, their time, their wishes, their preferences without the need for discussion or compromise, is it any wonder that people suddenly find that no-one is willing to compromise or have patience with them?
It gets to the point that you socialize on the Internet merely because the stakes are lower. You're less likely to get screwed or hurt or exploited and at the same time you can justify the time expenditure to others because "spending time online" appeals more to the protestant ethic of endless "useful" labor than does a phrase like "hanging out with some friends at the bar."
People are working all the time, their social relations have now become part of work too, calculated like work, and so they are finding that relationships feel like work and are subject to all of the risks and pitfalls that occur in the workplace.
The solutions? Stop bringing work home, set aside time to be "home," don't try to measure what other people are doing for you, only what you are doing for other people, and try not to take it personally when people "kick you to the curb" for not being productive enough or razz you for being a "slacker" and not leaving work at 8:30 PM to bring it home and pound on it with some climber friends from the office until 1:30 AM while calling it a "social life."
Re:Internet, yes, but other factors too. (Score:2, Flamebait)
Well here's the news: "Everybody" cannot be cohengently administered or instructed to change their lives; not "everybody" can swallow their pride and simply attempt to negate this implied "greed" culture of which you speak; some people are naturally ostentatious and extroverted - others, not so muc
Re:Internet, yes, but other factors too. (Score:5, Insightful)
After you descend into ad hominem, you make my point for me. You appeal to systematization by way of criticism against a post whose premise is that systematization is not always in order!
The absolute need to elucidate a philosophical alternative to a polemic against elucidatable orders speaks to the enlightenment-centric mentality that all that is must be measurable or it simply isn't, which is precisely the state of affairs I was bemoaning in my post.
My alternative is not philosophical, it is material, and it is not argument but rather deed: self-sacrifice in the interest of making others happier. That is my solution, and I don't appeal to logic to justify it because my polemic is precisely that logic is an inappropriate metric for feeling. I freely admit that I have no measurable justification. I make no incremental, falsifiable argument to buttress the point, because to do so is to concede from the start precisely what I seek to contradict: that all virtues or all things of merit must first be elucidated and second measured, whether measured in isolation or measured against.
Measurement is the problem here. Yes, the enlightenment brought us from the middle ages to the era of laser eye surgery, but its methods have limits and those limits are reached at the boundary of meaning, because meaning is an undefinable abstraction that has thus far only ever been expressed and sought, but as of yet never actually defined for all our work on the subject across disciplines from the behavioral sciences through the hard sciences. There is ample empirical evidence everywhere you look for the inability of modernism and enlightenment thinking to come to terms with meaning: Al Qaeda, Columbine, Heaven's Gate, Obesity, American Idol, plastic surgery, Internet friendships, and on and on. I do not propose to attempt a measurable linkage between these and lack of meaning, either. You'll just have to deal with that, as will readers.
To seek to apply rigor to the notion of life's "meaning" (which is, after all, fundamentally related to friendship and to work and to mortality) is to fail. Or at least, no-one has thus far succeeded in any commonly accepted way.
So in short, I refuse to make a logical argument to support my point that logical arguments are the wrong metric to use when discussion relationships because to do so is to subvert the point to begin with. Indeed, the need to move beyond logic in relationships is the point, and I happily concede that without logic there is not currently a commonly accepted means by which to make any appeal at all, regarding feelings and friendships or anything else. But that is the nature of things: when you dismiss all that is, you must face all that as of yet isn't.
But I reiterate my claim: cost-benefit analyses and cogent arguments are by definition constrained and framed by that selfsame worldview that I made my post in order to accuse, and beyond this, I suspect that many here would agree with me: that to apply logic and method to your relationships is to get only logic and method back from them. And that is the problem. I and many others want irrational things from friendship: people who are there for me even when I don't deserve it, people that I enjoy even though they don't add to my wealth or prestige, company that I want to keep even though it will all be meaningless when I am dead.
I can not make arguments for any of these needs, under any system of thought or belief, or by any standard or method of measurement. But that does not by any means make them weaker. I need them, and so do others. And increasingly, we don't have them.
Re:Internet, yes, but other factors too. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and I also want to be there for them when they don't deserve it. The more of us there are, the more likely that we will meet others of the same ilk and if everyone is willing to make the compromise, everyone will have real friends. That is the point of my post, absolutely.
Yes, yes, "Cum-Ba-Ya" and all that shit.
It's very subtle for Americans, somehow. But that's it, in a nutshell. Sounds simple, but it's really rare right now.
Re:Internet, yes, but other factors too. (Score:3, Insightful)
Work isn't the problem either though, you're wrong about that.
American culture is shallow:
- Widespread prosperity shields people from the ordinary trials of life that build character and bring people together.
- Peace deprives people of the bond of a common cause
- Feminization weakens us by favoring consiliation and non-confrontationalism over resolve and steadfastness
- Mass marketing eggagerates the importance of the trivial
- Government policies h
Re:Internet, yes, but other factors too. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Internet, yes, but other factors too. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, that's a lot of free-form brainstorming you have there. Some quick counterpoints:
- Commerce didn't cause feminization
- Commerce didn't cause people in government to favor handouts in place of families
- Commerce didn't cause people to forget the difference between right and wrong
- Commerce didn't cause peace (though it does support peace once you have it)
Only to attack the problem from your direction is to need a dozen monographs to explain it, and even then to be attacked from all sides, whereas to follow the Frankfurt school methodology and simply tie it all to measure and increase is to attack a single problem: rationalization/rationality/instrumentality.
So assume the conclusion "commerce is bad" and try to make vague connections to commerce from every other symptom of every other problem anyone can think of? No sale.
Commerce is part of the problem because commerce is part of life. I even connected it a few times (prosperity, marketing, TV, etc). But commerce isn't the problem.
Re:Internet, yes, but other factors too. (Score:3, Insightful)
Conservative drivel (Score:5, Insightful)
- Widespread prosperity shields people from the ordinary trials of life that build character and bring people together.
I've met a lot of people, including people who live or have grown up outside of the United States. Enduring adversity does not appear to have any appreciable impact on their character. On the other hand, it has more to do with personal values and the way they were raised. I've noticed that in general people who have suffered more "trials of life" actually are more poorly adjusted and have more personal problems and flaws in their character.
- Peace deprives people of the bond of a common cause
Why don't you just wear a sign on your forehead that says "Bush 4 Life"? Peace deprives people of having to die, maybe, but it never hurt anyone's ability to bond socially.
- Feminization weakens us by favoring consiliation and non-confrontationalism over resolve and steadfastness
Looking back at the very recent cold war, I'd say these "weak" values managed to save us from destroying civilization. Favoring consiliation and non-confrontationalism has nothing to do with feminizim or the female sex; you're assigning your own conservative cultural values to other people. Maybe you are taking this for granted, but it's a gross error. That aside, the worst people I have ever known were those with "resolve" and "steadfastness." Intelligent people naturally favor more clever solutions than simply using power to force their own "rightness."
Open up a dictionary right now and look up the word "conciliation." You spew all this crap about creating bonds and bringing people together, and then you outright denounce conciliation as a weak feminine value? Go figure.
- Government policies have undermined the importance of families on dozens of fronts
You're not specific enough--examples please.
- Right and wrong have given way to "political awareness" tests. Say the right things and you're golden.
You always have to please authority--that's life. Of course, you loath having to pay lip service to a culture that is not your own, and you have a strong urge to devalue you it and attack it, citing "political correctness" as some sort of liberal conspiracy, making yourself look like the brave little guy sticking it to the man. Spare me.
Re:Conservative drivel (Score:3, Interesting)
Enduring adversity does not appear to have any appreciable impact on their character.
You probably have a different definition of character that I do. I'm not taliking about political beliefs. I don't confuse the two.
Ordinary trials of life, like temporary difficulty paying for necessities, lead to people learning how to take care of themselves in tough situations. It leads to an understanding of the value of help from family and friends. And it leads people
Re:Internet, yes, but other factors too. (Score:2)
San Francisco (yes, east bay)
Chicago (south side)
Los Angeles (northern burbs)
Salt Lake City (downtown)
Portland (hillsboro area)
I have also visited over two-thirds of the 50 states, and much of that time not on the interstate system.
I haven't yet lived in or visited New York City but will be moving there later this year. I'll let you know.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I 100% Agree (Score:2, Insightful)
That being said, I still think there is an inverse relationship between the quantity of conversation and the qualit
Technology..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, phones, TV, the Internet... they all direct our communication and our association away from older models. Musicians who used to hang out at the same nightclub now link to each other on MySpace. It's great that they can do it, but there was something better about the old way.
The one redeeming quality of socialism (if socialists would recognize it), is that it promotes a notion of community as opposed to the depersonalization and fragmentation of our relationships that advancing technology (fueled by capitalism and freedom) promotes. As old concepts like neighborhoods, towns, churches decline in influence, people feel the need for stronger communal associations. Government at various levels can fulfil some of that need, however poorly.
I believe the increasing size of the US gov't (as a percentage of GDP) over time is a reflection of the very same needs. The blessing of the US is that this is happening at a relatively slow and controlled pace over a period of decades. I love freedom and technology, but... well, here I am on the Internet instead of arguing with some friends at a lunch counter.
Re:Technology..... (Score:2)
If you consult The German Ideology and other non-Das-Kapital works by Marx, you'll find that this is the philosophical underpinning of fundamental socialism and communism--the belief that no matter what other consequences socialism/communism do or don't bring, they're more likely to lead to meaningful relationships, mea
More mobile population (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More mobile population (Score:2)
From Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's well-researched work on the "collapse of American community:
Makes sense...for some... (Score:2, Interesting)
As opposed to face to face (Score:2)
Yo
You chillin?
Chillin
Straight chillin
Yo
Xbox?
Nah
Straight
NONSENSE!! (Score:2)
And, thanks to the Internet, I keep closer contact with family members living else where. Also, thanks to the Internet, I have reestablished connnections with folks whom I haven't heard from in more than 30 years,or longer.
If anything, the Internet has brought the world closer together and we are all finding out that t
I disagree (Score:2)
However, I believe I have a rather large social network. The only thing is that it's all online. I am a rather shy person in real life, and somewhat afraid of meeting new people, so I only have two o
NO. MODERN WAY OF CORPORATE LIVING (Score:2)
My closest friend, for over 16+ years now, lives a 15 minutes walk to me. Yet, we do not see each other.
He goes to work, goes back home. Goes to work, goes back home. This is the way with most friends nowadays.
The internet, on the contrary, have awarded me many close friends that i could not hope to find via normal means - intellectuality, humor, manners, philosopy merged in one pot
Many factors (Score:2)
I believe that the lack of close friendships in Western societies could be related to the internet, that the internet permits us to meet our most basic and fundamental psychological needs online. Once these basic needs are met, we lose our incentive to overcome the challenges to find and foster more rich and fruitful personal relationships. Why go out, when
And before that we blamed TV. (Score:3)
More complicated than that. (Score:2)
On point A, I know there are others (my wife being one of them) who crave human interaction with like-minded people, and require vicinity as part of their definition. For those people, I hope this study opens avenues to help them compensate for this need in our ever-closing world.
On point B, I think those who will suffer the
Changing definitions (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure. In 1985, a close friend was anyone who shared my hobbies and was on a first-name basis with me. There weren't many to pick from so I had to work at maintaining a friendship with all of them.
Thanks to cheap telepresence I'm now in touch with plenty of people who share my interests. I can reserve close friend status for the very few people I'd trust with my life.
Close friends on the internet? (Score:2)
spurious logic (Score:2)
Keeping in touch with distant friends (Score:3, Insightful)
Some people use the Internet to find new acquaintances or make new friends. Some people use the Internet to maintain relationships with existing friends. Doubtless many people do both.
I find myself in the second category. While I occasionally make acquaintances via the Internet, my primary mechanism for forming friendships is still meatspace. The Internet is tremendously helpful to me in maintaining relationships with friends who no longer live where I live. I can communicate with friends from my years on the East Coast, friends from my time in the military, college, and even back to high school.
The quality of that communication is up to the parties involved, but the mechanism is there. It is simply easier for me to send an email than it ever was to write a letter. A group of about eight or ten friends, spread all over the country, communicate via a small discussion group.
I think back to the early 1990s. I was geographically isolated for three years, far from anything or anyone familiar. The friends with whom I communicated most often were those who had email addresses, and there were many times when those email conversations boosted my spirits and helped me feel connected.
My feeling is that the Internet makes a wide array of communication possible - everything from the shallow smack-talking of game boards and in-game messaging to deep philosophical conversation and truly meaningful sharing of thoughts and feelings. As others in this discussion have suggested, how you use that technology is your own choice.
Not the Internet (Score:2)
Underlying cause (Score:2)
So there are two observations: people have an increasing number of on-line buddies and a decreasing number of off-line real friends. But who can be sure that the former is causing the latter? Statistics is full of this mistake.
OK, lets throw in a third phenomenon, people are more mobile over larger distances. Who is still living in the same city, country or even continent he grew up? Living far away from your old friends and relatives definitely stimulates the use of on-line communication. And each time bui
The Net can be used for local connections too (Score:2, Interesting)
1) Internet tech doesn't necessarily discourage local, face-to-face friendships. Right -now- the Web isn't used for local connection but I think that's just because of the way it's -framed-, just a momentary lack of vision by the people/firms building it. And I think that's a temporary anomaly that's disappearing as wi-fi and locative tech takes hold.
Remember the net evolved from a set of LANs, and even as recently as the 80s, the folks who inhabited the dial-up BBS world were ve
A lonely man in a lonely city (Score:5, Insightful)
Add to the Internet:
These all contribute to not talking to people, not mingling, and not making new friends. Why make a new friend on the streetcar when you're yapping to a friend on your Bluetooth cell phone in your car? Why go out to a theatre when you can see it in private on DVD or cable? Why make listen to that attractive woman trying to hit on you when you're rocking out with your iPod?
The more private, the more personal devices and tools we have, the more solitary our lives are becoming We don't want to share an experience anymore. We don't want to do things for the common good or the benefit of society at large. The Internet is just one facet of an overall trend. Our lifestyle in the early 21st century promotes this focus inwards and our selfishness.
Not just the internet (Score:5, Insightful)
Taking an extreme example, it is now quite possible to live in a room by yourself and never really talk to anyone, never go anywhere, never really interact with people at all - assuming you order your food in. But even to a lesser extreme things like Wal Mart and supermarkets provide the means for people to survive without being dependent on any other individual person. Whether you're buying dinner or a new car, you're interaction is going to be with someone whom you could just as easily never see again. Instead, we're just dependent on 'the system'.
Looking outside of developed countries, there hundreds of examples of societies and cultures where there isn't a supermarket on every corner, in which case you really have to build relationships and get along with people, whether it's with Mr Baker or Mr Farmer or whatever, in order to survive. And in those places, I can tell you from plenty of field experience, people often genuinely have many more close friends and are much closer to their extended families than we are in the west. In such cultures, people genuinely feel connected to others - not just the people they are very close to, but their neighbors, their communities, their tribes, and their fellow citizens in general. It's probably an important thing to bear in mind, especially since we seem to be dropping bombs on a lot of these sorts of folks these days.
From an evolutionary perspective, situations of social interdependency are a more 'natural' state. I'm not sure if they are 'better' in every way, but they are probably healthier in a strict psychological sense.
I've travelled the world... (Score:5, Interesting)
I flew to the US for a week long holiday, with the first weekend spent in NY meeting up with a group of 13 Americans, i travelled with 3 other Brits. We toured 6 states and 3 capitals in a week and it was one of the best holidays i've had. Although i'm only 17 (Started posting at 13) i've grown up with these people. Granted, i went on holiday with a 21, 24 and 34 year old and the next closest to my age was 20 that we met, but i'm great friends with all of these people and we regularly meet.
If it weren't for the internet i wouldn't be mates with a 34 year old drummer from York. Although i was 13 when i joined, people thought i was 18, we talked to each other because we were interesting and liked the same topics, not because we met in a bar drunk and liked the face sitting opposite us.
Is it an unusual way to meet people, probably. Is it a flawed way of meeting people? So far, absolutely not.
Useless (Score:3, Interesting)
Finally I know the cause (Score:5, Funny)
All these years, I thought it was because I was an asshole.
Rubbish (Score:3, Funny)
What do you mean? (Score:3, Funny)
Because of the internet I have plenty of friends! (Score:4, Funny)
I getmail from all the gals too, such as Sonjia and Marci, who both saw my stats on a dataing site (funny I never signed up for any dating sites...) but they REALLY want to meet me!
That guy who wrote the article must just be a loser. ;-D
How About a Real Study (Score:3, Insightful)
The Strength of Internet Ties [pewinternet.org], authored by Jeffrey Boase, John Horrigan, Barry Wellman, and Lee Rainie found "The internet and email aid users in maintaining their social networks and provide pathways to help when people face big decisions" The press release [pewinternet.org] that publicized the report says, "One major payoff comes when people use the internet to press their social networks into action as they face major challenges. People not only socialize online, but they also incorporate the internet into their quest for information and advice as they seek help and make decisions.
The Duke/Arizona study is flawed in its analysis, as it interprets correlation as indicating causality, a common mistake among quantitative researchers.
Got to be simpified anwer (Score:5, Insightful)
decades. I would blame, not the Internet but Television, The Interstate highway
system, and Subburbs. I think they are way our of date in their study. There
used to be tons of social networks, organizations and support groups in society.
Now days no on belongs to them. E.g., the Jaycees, The Odd fellows, The Daughters
of the American Revolution, other civic organizations, etc. If I were dictator
of this country, I would ban Television.
Quote from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital [wikipedia.org]
Social capital "refers to the collective value of all 'social networks' and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other," according to Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone and the concept's leading exponent (though not its originator). According to Putnam and his followers, social capital is a key component to building and maintaining democracy. Putnam says that social capital is declining in the United States. This is seen in lower levels of trust in government and lower levels of civic participation. Putnam also says that television and urban sprawl have had a significant role in making America far less connected.
Unquote
or (Score:5, Funny)
lack of commons and corporate motives (Score:4, Insightful)
CORPORATIONS
So in most cases, nobody makes any money when people can connect and help each other feel good and solve each other's problems. Now, if they are connecting and buying coffee, or they are coming togther and buying entertainment, or they are coming together and buying a meal -- then somebody's making a buck. Or maybe they are coming together in a college classroom, or a dance class, or meeting at the mall. there is a buck there too. Let's not even start with bars.
The one thing I see more and more is the wholesale cash-for-connection thing in the US that is not in other parts of the world. Basically you have to pay to have any place where you can meet *new* people and socialize.
The other affect corporations have is that they keep most people SO busy working to survive, there is little time or energy left to have many friends. This may be toward a demographic older than most
Finally, the rise in corporate power has further stratified society along money lines. In the US we have more financial difference between the top and bottom since the early 1900s. There is virtually no middle class anymore. What this leads to is a reluctance of peopel to reach out to others, for fear of crossing the (now huge) social chasm created by wealth disparity.
I think the rise in power of corporations is largely to blame for destroying the social networks of people - as much or more than the "Internet". Basically, the Internet to me is near-free, near-instant, widely available communication. By ITSELF - more communication will help people connect to more people in more meaningful ways than ever possible before. We have only seen the first 2-5% of what is possible because of the Internet. Instant communication will break down all barriers eventually and lead to abundance.
Mod parent up... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uh... okay, sure (Score:5, Insightful)
I've got to agree ... bogus article alert time.
People say they have fewer people they can talk to about important stuff, even if they are talking to lots more people from all over the place about unimportant stuff online."
Maybe people are talking about important stuff more than ever, but doing it behind the anonymity or convenience of blogs?
People who say they have dozens or hundreds of close friends in real life don't know the meaning of the term "close friends". A close friend is one you could tell anything, and their response is "how can I help?" Want an easy 20-second test of whether someone is really a close friend or just an acquaintance? Tell them you want to get a sex change and watch their reaction.
Re:Uh... okay, sure (Score:2)
The real "test" for friendhsip is called LIFE and
Re:Uh... okay, sure (Score:2)
I was going to point out that if you had doubts about their support in such a case, it says more about how you feel than anything else, but I didn't want to obscure the point of the post, which is that there's a big difference between how real friends would react, compared to acquaintances.
Re:not valid everywhere... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, if you tell them you want a sex change, you're probably not going to try to convert them to going down the same road ...
I think that's what offends a lot of people about born-again fundamentalist evangelicals - the lack of respect for other people's beliefs. The evangelicals don't see it - they believe its God's command.
Re:Uh... okay, sure and furthermore (Score:4, Insightful)
I sincerely believe that the Internet has added access and accessibility to more and more meaningful relationships. After all in small town America, you kind of had to stay friendly with most since you were probably distantly related and 'you can't choose your relatives'. You can, and DO choose your Internet relationships based on shared interests.
Plus, now all your old family, small town friends and relatives have almost instant access to one another via computer. Kind of looks to me like they got it totally backwards.
Re:Personal experience (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't know about this... (Score:2)
I think that you are just talking out of your arse. A psychopath does not go online unless it is maintainh/create control, and I find it difficult to believe that any medcial proffesional would encourage such a "mailinglist". Of course, any psychopath is unlikely to participate in the first place ;-) If you want to have examples of modern day psycopaths, have a look at part of former Enron
Re:No contest (Score:2)
Perhaps not *the* factor, but certainly *a* factor.
I live in a small town in Montana. Aside from my significant other and one "local" fellow we are friends with, issues suitable for discussion with the citizens here aren't exactly technically involved or philosophically intriguing. In a town of about 5,000, the "meat" social life supports about 20 bars and 20 churches. The Inte
Re:What do you mean "Shrinking Social Network"? (Score:2)
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
Oh, and amusingly, or perhaps sadly... (Score:3, Interesting)