Internet Use Cuts Socializing Time

Sammy at Palm Addict writes "A new survey published in the New York Times states that using the internet has seriously cut into our socializing time. We spend less time watching TV and more time using the internet and following up email. 'The survey found that use of the Internet has displaced television watching and a range of other activities. Internet users watch television for one hour and 42 minutes a day, compared with the national average of two hours.'"

The Journal "Duh!"

[aborchers]

Since when did the NYT become the Journal "Duh!"?

There are only so many hours in a day and if you spend them doing something that you couldn't do in the past, you aren't going to have them to do things you would have previously done.

Or am I missing something?

Huh?

[code_nerd]

How is watching TV "socializing"?

Cuts Socializing time?

[mortonda]

I think that doing email and chatting on IRC count as more social than watching TV. At least it's a form of communication, whereas TV is just brainless.

Re:Huh?

[Crosma]

It isn't. And if anything, using the Internet is more socialable than TV, because of message boards, IRC, IM, etc.

Re:cuts socializing time?

[Quasar1999]

better still... I use the internet to actually socialize... It allows me to talk to 5 to 10 people at the same time much more efficiently than I could on the phone, or even in person... Bless chat programs... :)

Re:Huh?

[X-rated Ouroboros]

They mean the psychiatric definition of "socialization"- Where you are taught the norms and mores of a society. By failing to watch TV, we're not getting the correct doses of "BUY! BUY! BUY!" (which is bad) and by using the internet, you're learning to develop your own opinions about the world (which is worse). All around antisocial behaviour from the social control and culture industries' perspective.

Next thing you know, when internet users do watch that 1h42m of television, they might [gasp!] question the talking heads. Then where would they be?

Not for me. TV is a great background activity.

[Peter Cooper]

I watch as much TV, if not more, than ever before. However, due to wi-fi and having a tiny notebook, I can now sit and work/write/do research with the TV in the background, which means my TV watching is semi-productive. I tend to leave the TV on Sky News or something.

Having the Internet to hand makes TV more fun, as you can look up movie trivia on IMDB, or get indepth information on things you've just heard in a documentary. I find it hard watching TV on its own now without playing on the Internet at the same time. TV is a great background activity, though not a good foreground one, IMHO.

Re:TV

[Anonymous Coward]

The real WTF is what was written on the national TV-watching average being at 2 hours. I would have thought it was much more...

Remember, just like the figure for internet-users, the number for the general population is just an average. Many slashdotters don't watch TV at all, unless you count the one or two episodes a week of their favorite series they download from the internet. Then there are people who divide all their free time between TV and chatting (*cough* teenagers *cough*) who up the TV-watching average for internet-users.

Likewise, there are non-internet users who do silly things like read books, or work themselves to death to put food on the table, rather than watch TV, which brings the average down to two hours.

Re:The Journal "Duh!"

[SeaFox]

I usually do both at the same time, I have the TV running while I'm on the Internet. So am I being just as antisocial as before since I'm not taking up so much "extra time" to do email follow up?

Bull

[tekunokurato]

I also question the premise that watching TV is socializing. It's a passive activity and most people have the bare minimum of conversation or interaction while watching. When I was in high school, my mother would always demand that I get off my computer and spend time with the family, expressly considering TV to be "family time." Bullshit. I was interacting with people on boards and through e-mail and the rare blog back in the day, and my interactivity (not to mention intellectual exercise) stopped utterly when I had to go sit on the couch.

Less TV time w/o ads

[EvilStein]

I definately spend less time watching TV (shows) because I grab ad-free versions off the net. That'll shave off 15 minutes from each show right there.

Two TV shows without adverts and I have a half hour of my life back.

Re:Cuts Socializing time?

[ahsile]

I agree as well. Not only is it easier, it's less expensive! Since school ended my friends and I have all migrated to different places. Rather than all of us racking up long distance trying to call each other, we hop on the internet (which we all have a connection to anyway) and chat. Sure, we're not actually speaking to each other... but if we really wanted we could fire up the webcams and the microphones and you're set.

(And once again...) TV is also not a social activity. I don't know how sitting around watching moving pictures constitutes socialization.

Have you considered...

[robyannetta]

...maybe that's what we want? Not everyone's life is fairy-tale perfect, ya know.

This article is kind of silly

[minairia]

I completely disagree with the gist of this article. On-line game playing, reading and responding to e-mails, IM, etc. are forms of socializing, much more than staring blindly at the TV. My family lives overseas; with IM and e-mail, I communicate with them at a much more constant, intense, intimate level now than when I was a kid sitting around the family room with us all in the same house. In those days, we'd all wind up veged in front of the TV paying more attention to it than each other. As for friends, I'll always have one or two or more long running IM chats going, sometimes they heat up, other times they do quiet for a while but I am socially in contact with different people all day, instead of just a few minutes on the phone. Also, the article doesn't even mention that, while doing stuff on the net, I (and most people I know) have the TV droning on in the background anyway.

TV = Social?

[lilmouse]

Since when did sitting in front of a TV count as social time?

--LWM

A Good Thing, IMHO

[petrus4]

This is positive. Following up email means that people are actually communicating with each other, whereas television generally meant the opposite.

With only a few notable exceptions, I have tended to long be of the opinion that television has been probably the single most worthless and negative piece of technology invented thus far...and its one claim at redemption IMHO could be the statement that it was a stop on the journey to the invention of the computer monitor.

Even at its most banal, the Internet is generally still encouraging some degree of both literacy and interactivity from its users. The "idiot box" on the other hand, is richly deserving of the term. It has been proven that in some cases a person's level of neurological activity is higher during sleep than it is while watching television.

The obsolescence of television, if it occurs, is not an event that I will waste any time mourning whatsoever...and I am in fact inclined to believe that if the universal death of television were to take place tomorrow, an intellectual rennaisance of unparalleled scope would almost certainly take place in the weeks, months, and years to follow.

Re:Does social engineering count as socializing?

[FreeUser]

I mean, if a band wants to make a song that "the man" doesn't want you to hear, they'll have a hard time getting it published by a big record label or played on the radio stations that are all owned by ClearChannel. So, maybe they'll release it for free over the Internet. Not that they will be, if the government ever were successful at eliminating all copyright infringement, it's only the non-corporate-sanctioned independent voices that people will be able to find on filesharing programs.

The efforts are aimed primarilly at banning the technologies. Congress, the president, and the media cartels are trying to ban P2P technology, not just go after those who violate copyrights. Lose the technology, and you lose the conduit by which indie bands and indie filmmakers can disseminate their wares and reach a marketplace without going through the cartels.

We've seen comments like that in other threads, decrying Freenet as "encouraging" despicable things like child pornography because it tries to insure privacy and anonymouty on the Internet, the kind of privacy and anonymouty we took for granted just a couple of decades ago ... and now take for granted that only "bad" people want (or need). The implication is that anyone using a technology like Freenet must be bad ... which is a tiny step from asserting that Freenet (and similar technologies) should be banned. Indeed, as I mentioned above, there are powerful forces asserting that very thing right now ... and some courts who are agreeing.

In the next decade or two we are about to get some very ugly lessons in why GOOD people need anonymouty and privacy ... at which point those very nay-sayers will chime in with "hind-sight is 20/20" ... never once admitting they were wrong and those they shouted down were right.

So no, I don't think legislation like the Sony Bono act and the DMCA are doing a thing to erode corporate control over the media. The Internet has been doing that, and Sony Bono, the DMCA, and other more toxic legislation now pending are designed to slow and ultimately thwart that, and to return control to those very same cartels by means of a huge, legal club with which to financially whack any who threaten their cartel. Remember, the DMCA lets you silence a websight by mere accusation ... no actual copyright infringement need have occurred, indeed, no evidence of infringement need even exist, for a publisher (website) to be shutdown (censored).

That is hardly empowering the little guy, or eroding control of content by the big guy. Quite the opposite.

Re:cuts socializing time?

[eggspurt]

That's a very catchy ./ headline "Internet use cuts socializing time". The true headline is less catchy: "Internet use cutting into TV viewing and socializing". The actual text says "57 percent of Internet use was devoted to communications like e-mail, instant messaging and chat rooms" (socializing in my book). It also says "an hour of time spent using the Internet reduces face-to-face contact with friends, co-workers and family by 23.5 minutes". So, 57% of 1 hour is 34 minutes. 1 hour of time on the Internet involves 34 minutes of socializing, which is 10.7 minutes more socializing than sans Internet. Internet increases the amount of socializing.

1 hour and 42 minutes?

[kuzb]

I don't know about you, but I backed that off to 0 hours and 0 minutes a day. The problem isn't with the internet displacing TV. The problem is with TV no longer being interesting.

Lets face it, the content gets more and more mindless, and the commercials get longer - TV is cutting it's own throat with this one.

How TV Watching can enable Socializing.

[H01M35]

Okay, I'll bite.

It's like back when Seinfeld episodes were new. Everybody would go home, watch them, then talk about them around the water cooler the next day. If you didn't see the episode, you couldn't be in on any of the master of your domain jokes.

Re:Mod parent up

[DarkSarin]

bah, that's because you haven't found the rest of the quote! The quote refers to how many people approach data analysis (incorrectly)--the collect a bunch of data and then analyze it until they get the desired results--having very little idea of what the analysis really does, or why, or what it all means.

Some folks see p=.042, and think, "Hey, p is less than .05, great! This means that my results are important!" They don't understand that significant doesn't mean important in this context, or that sometimes a p of .062 is also significant. They don't know anything about multivariate statistics, power analysis or anything else. Many of them couldn't even run an ANOVA without the use of a computer (it isn't mathematically hard, but they don't know the procedure).

These are the same people that don't know that for most tests, t^2 is the same as F. They plug numbers into excel or SPSS, and end up with other numbers that they have a vaguely warm feeling about understanding (but lack true insight as to what it all means), and make decisions based on that. Their stats prof told them to do things this way, so they do it.

Data analysis is a VERY important part of psychology, and anyone who thinks otherwise is uninformed. There are many psychologists (clinicians to be specific) who fall within this category as well. I have no respect for this type of person--who will not take time to actually LEARN what they should be doing.

Oh well, I am so far OT by now it doesn't matter. The point is that psychologists do tend to know what they are doing. They have contributed more to your life than you realize, and will continue to do so. Have a nice day.

Increases *my* socializing time!

[Roblimo]

Let's see... Wednesday Caleb was over, hanging out. I met him through a Linux Users Group email list.

Last night my wife and I went to a local amateur circus performance with a coworker and his family, including some of his relatives who were visiting Florida (where we live) from MA and WVA. I originally met this coworker online. At the time we lived 400 miles apart. In fact, the online meeting led to his *becoming* a coworker, and now we live 15 miles apart and see each other -- including families -- regularly.

Last week I went out drinking with some guys I semi-hang out with on IRC during work. We socialize on IRC in between job tasks, and get together at least twice per month to drink, go sailing, watch movies, listen to music, etc. We arrange most of our get-togethers by IRC and/or email.

I correspond with people all over the world by email. In the last two years I've traveled on business to 12 U.S. states and six other countries, and in every one of them there were people I already "knew" and enjoyed meeting F2F for the first time. These are people I never would have met without the Internet. And it goes the other way, too. People I "know" through email or IRC show up here and I show *them* around.

Does reading and posting to a West Wight Potter (make of sailboat I own) forum count as socializing? What about when members of the forum get together for group sails, as happens at least a few times every year here in Florida -- and once or twice a week in San Francisco Bay, where there are a lot more Potter sailboats?

There are two local business people I met (through mutual friends) on Linked-In with whom I have lunch monthly; we bounce ideas off of each other and give each other advice on careers and such. This isn't anything formal, and we aren't in similar businesses. We just like each other, and it's nice to get an outside perspective on some of our ideas.

What was that about the Internet cutting down on socializing? For whom? :)

Re:The Journal "Duh!"

[severoon]

I think this study is flawed. Aren't the people predisposed to spending lots of time on the Internet actually *more* socially engaged (albeit virtually so) than they were previously? I think so...as I understand it, this study doesn't measure the demographics before and after Internet presence, they just compared the two. Likely you'll find that, before, these people weren't socializing anyway--they were on the computer. Now the only difference is, they're hardwired.