Are Americans Becoming INTERNET SLAVES?

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), June, 2000

As Internet use grows, Americans report that they are spending less time with friends and family, shopping in stores, or watching television, and more time working for their employers at home--without cutting back their hours in the office. These are the major preliminary results of the first assessment of the social consequences of Internet use based on a large, representative sample of American households, including both Internet users and nonusers. The research, conducted by the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society (SIQSS), sampled 4,113 adults in 2,689 households.

A key finding is that "the more hours people use the Internet, the less time they spend with real human beings," according to Stanford (Calif.) University professor Norman Nie, director of SIQSS and the principal investigator of the study along with Lutz Erbring of the Free University of Berlin. "This is an early trend that, as a society, we really need to monitor carefully."

While a number of commentators have speculated about how the Internet might change people's daily lives and some studies have looked at the use patterns of nonrepresentative groups of Internet users, only a sample representative of households nationally allows analysts to make projections about Americans' future Internet usage and its likely consequences, the researchers say. They worked with InterSurvey of Menlo Park, Calif., to develop a unique Internet-based method for conducting surveys with a national probability sample of the general population, including both Internet users and nonusers.

Around two-thirds of those surveyed who have Internet access said they spend fewer than five hours a week on the Internet, and most of them did not report large changes in their day-to-day behavior. The other 36% who use the Internet five or more hours a week do report significant changes in their lives. The largest changes are reported by those who spend more than 10 hours a week on the Net--individuals who currently account for 15% of all Internet users, but are likely to be a much larger fraction in the future. "As of today, heavy Internet users are still a small fraction of the total population," Nie points out, "but that fraction is steadily growing."

Social isolation up. "Internet time is coming out of time viewing television, but also at the expense of time people spend on the phone gabbing with family and friends or having a conversation with people in the room with them," he indicates. Most Internet users utilize e-mail and undoubtedly have increased their "conversations" with family and friends through this medium. "E-mail is a way to stay in touch, but you can't share a coffee or a beer with somebody on e-mail or give them a hug. The Internet could be the ultimate isolating technology that further reduces our participation in communities even more than television did before it." For the most part, the Internet is an individual activity. "It's not like TV, which you can treat as background noise. It requires more engagement and attention."

Of regular Internet users, who use the Net five or more hours a week, about one-quarter report spending less time with family and friends, either in person or on the phone, and 10% say they spend less time attending social events outside the home. On the other hand, "those who use the Internet most also report spending fewer hours caught in traffic, fewer hours in shopping malls, and, especially, less time watching television."

Work invades home. "One of the surprises for us was the degree to which people tell us that they are working at home on the Internet for their employers," Nie notes. While four percent of regular users working full or part time had cut back their hours at work since gaining Internet access, 16% said they were working more hours at home since they gained Internet access without cutting back at the office, with eight percent reporting increases in time spent working both at home and at the office. In effect, more than a quarter of full- or part-time workers who use the Internet more than five hours a week indicated that it has increased the amount of time spent working at home without decreasing the amount of time spent working in the office.

"We may be seeing the very beginning of telecommuting," Nie explains, citing the four percent who have cut back on hours in the office. "On the other hand, we all know from our cell phones and laptops that work appears to be intruding into every other aspect of our lives, and that's one of the clearest trends in these data."

Digital divide persists. "The Internet is entering the mainstream of American society," Erbring states, with about half of the population having access somewhere, 42% of them in their homes, and another 10 to 15% elsewhere, mostly offices and schools.

"Everybody is going to be a user soon, and access is growing by successive birth cohorts," Nie explains. "That means we can expect to see large changes for communities and society as a whole." What currently is being marked is the halfway point in this dissemination process.