Study takes early look at
social consequences of Net use
BY KATHLEEN O'TOOLE
As Internet use grows,
Americans report they spend 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 a new study that is the first
assessment of the social consequences of Internet use
based on a large, representative sample of American
households, including both Internet users and non-users.
The study was conducted by the Stanford Institute for the
Quantitative Study of Society (SIQSS) and released today.
The sample was of 4,113 adults in 2,689 households.
A key finding of the study
is that "the more hours people use the Internet, the
less time they spend with real human beings," said
Stanford Professor Norman Nie, director of SIQSS and
principal investigator of the study along with his
co-investigator Professor Lutz Erbring of the Free
University of Berlin. "This is an early trend that,
as a society, we really need to monitor carefully."
Related
Information:
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 non-representative groups of
Internet users, only a sample representative of
households nationally allows analysts to make projections
about future Internet usage and its likely consequences,
the researchers say. They worked with InterSurvey of
Menlo Park, to develop a unique Internet-based method for
conducting surveys with a national probability sample of
the general population, including both Internet users and
non-users.
Some of the preliminary
findings:
- People spend more
hours on the Internet the more years they have
been using it.
- A quarter of the
respondents who use the Internet regularly (more
than five hours a week) feel that it has reduced
their time with friends and family, or attending
events outside the home.
- A quarter of regular
Internet users who are employed say the Internet
has increased the time they spend working at home
without cutting back at the office.
- Sixty percent of
regular Internet users say the Internet has
reduced their TV viewing, and one-third say they
spend less time reading newspapers.
- The least educated
and the oldest Americans are least likely to have
Internet access, but when they do use the
Internet, their use is similar to others' use.
About 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 researchers said. But the other 36 percent
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 only
15 percent 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 said, "but that fraction is
steadily growing."
"Moreover,"
Erbring added, "time spent on the net also grows
with the number of years a person has been
connected."
Nie and Erbring emphasized
that their analysis is preliminary, and SIQSS plans to
conduct follow-up studies on at least an annual basis.
Method used
The research methodology
employed for this study produces a large, representative
sample of all American households, not just current
computer or Internet users. Nie and Erbring used
InterSurvey, a company Nie co-founded, to conduct the
survey on the net. (Nie, a political scientist with
expertise in surveys, is co-founder and chairman of the
company's board. Stanford is an investor in the company,
and the university's business school has an agreement to
conduct occasional research through InterSurvey.)
InterSurvey is in the
process of giving Internet devices and connectivity to
several hundred thousand households in exchange for their
participation in surveys and marketing studies of all
types. To date, InterSurvey has built a 35,000-person
panel of participants and has supplied them all with free
Web TV. Using this set-top box allows people to access
the Internet through their television set, and enables
the researchers to quickly survey those who would not
otherwise have Internet access. The company also pays for
every participating household to be connected to the
Internet.
By using newly enrolled
households Nie and Erbring were able to distinguish
between those who had prior connection to the Internet
and those who did not. The sampling error for this study
is plus or minus 1.5 percent for questions asked of
everyone in the sample and plus or minus 2.5 percent for
information collected only from those who have had prior
Internet access.
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," Nie said.
Most Internet users use
e-mail, and undoubtedly have increased their
"conversations" with family and friends through
this medium, he said. "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," he said.
"The Internet could
be the ultimate isolating technology that further reduces
our participation in communities even more than
television did before it," he said.
For the most part, Nie
said, 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 percent
say they spend less time attending social events outside
the home.
On the other hand, Erbring
said, "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."
"E-commerce may soon
change land use for bricks-and-mortar retail as some
people have been saying," Nie said, "and
eventually we may start to see some cap on the growth of
traffic gridlock."
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 said.
Only a small number -- 4
percent of regular Internet users working full or part
time -- said they had cut back their hours at work since
gaining Internet access, but a much larger number -- 16
percent of employed regular Internet users -- said they
were working more hours at home since they gained
Internet access without cutting back at the office, with
8 percent actually reporting increases in time spent
working both at home and at the office.
Mainstream online but
digital divide persists
"The Internet is
entering the mainstream of American society,"
Erbring said, with about half of the population having
access somewhere, 42 percent of them in their homes, and
another 10 to 15 percent elsewhere, mostly offices and
schools.
Mere access to the
Internet has been studied more in the past than actual
Internet use. "This study confirmed others that have
found demographic differences in who has access,"
Nie said. "Those without access are, above all, less
educated and, to a lesser extent, more likely to be
African Americans or Hispanics. Women also have somewhat
less access, but the Stanford researchers found the
gender difference to be mostly among men and women who
are not working outside the home. This difference in
access to the Internet is the often discussed
"digital divide."
"What's equally
interesting, however, is that once people have access to
the Internet, there are more similarities than
differences in terms of how much they use it and the
activities they use it for," Nie said.
E-mail popular, not
chat rooms
The most common Internet
activities for each demographic group are sending and
receiving electronic mail and searching for information,
he said. On average, users said they used the Internet
for six to seven different activities. A majority have
started to use it as a consumer resource. "For
example, between 40 and 60 percent use it for travel and
product information," Erbring said. "A quarter
of Internet users report having made an online purchase.
Online stock trading, banking or auctions remain marginal
activities, barely reaching 10 percent, and only
approaching 20 percent even among veteran netizens who
have been Internet users for more than five years."
Still, one in four regular Internet users say they spend
less time shopping in stores, and 15 percent say they
spend less time in traffic since they gained Internet
access.
Television use down
The study confirms
suspicions that Internet use comes partly at the expense
of television viewing.
"We find that about
60 percent of those who use the Internet more than five
hours a week are telling us it is coming out of their TV
time. Even among those who spend only a few hours a week
on the net, a quarter tell us it cuts into their TV
viewing," said Erbring, who is a professor of mass
communications spending a sabbatical at the Stanford
institute and teaching social research methods in the
Department of Communication. "This trend is likely
to have a major impact on the economics of the media
industry and, as recent developments suggest, may lead to
further integration of media and information delivery
technologies."
Internet users also report
spending less time reading newspapers. "Of course,
it may be that they are reading news on the web, so they
don't read hard copy any more," he added.
Television has consumed a
much bigger chunk of people's time than newspapers,
however, so it is in greater competition with the
Internet for time, he said.
'Home alone and
anonymous''
Nie, who has in the past
studied the decline of American involvement in politics
and community organizations, said that while many
commentators have expressed concerns about invasion of
privacy on the Internet, few have focused on the
potential psychological and emotional effects of
"more people being home, alone and anonymous."
Nie also expressed concern
about the ethical effects for business dealings.
"When we lived in small communities, the old story
was that you said to yourself, 'I'll see this guy and his
wife at church on Sunday, so I better be honest with him
today.' Then we moved to the big anonymous cities and it
became, 'Hell, I'll hardly ever see this guy.' Now, it's
becoming, 'Hell, I won't ever even know this guy's
name.'"
Nie said the institute
plans to continue to study the social effects of
information technology as users' patterns change and more
people gain access. "Plenty of companies are doing
research on the Internet, but it's mostly about people's
buying behavior," he said. "We need to look
much broader than that to contribute to a public
discourse as we build this powerful new technology, and
to help us formulate better public and private policy
decisions," he said.
"We need to do a more
conscious job of examining the unintended and potentially
negative consequences of constructing our new electronic
system for information and commerce in this century than
we did in building its physical counterpart of streets
and highways in the last century." SR
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