The Anti-Social Social Network

You are wasting away in front of the computer, or so they say. The Internet’s free flow of information facilitates quicker transactions, allows for cheaper interest rates and promotes competitive prices via online stores. It also allows you to instant message friends and colleagues, regardless of whether or not they are within speaking distance of you. The perks and creature comforts of the World Wide Web are well documented and in typical self-serving fashion, internet sites remind us of them via the constant bombardment of online advertising. Major advances in information technology have almost always brought about changes in the way we interact socially and the Internet is, in essence, a global social network. The telephone, radio, television, Internet - landmarks in the evolution of information technology - all changed the social landscape by bringing us closer together, while simultaneously isolating us from physical contact with each other. Each of these advancements has played a progressively larger role in globalization. But while the speedier spread of information allows for a quick exchange of ideas, we’ve become increasingly more isolated in the process of receiving the information. Given the incredible speed at which the Internet has been incorporated into so many facets of our personal and professional lives, the relationship between social activity and the Internet begs serious questions of our not-so-distant future.

Stanford University released one of the few studies done so far on the anti-social aspects of the Internet. The Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society (IQSS), under the direction of Prof. Norman Nie, surveyed just over 4,000 people on their internet usage. In an interview with the Washington Post, Prof. Nie said, “We're moving from a world in which you know all your neighbors, see all your friends, interact with lots of different people every day, to a functional world, where interaction takes place at a distance. You can do an awful lot of things on the net,” he explained, “but you can't look someone in the eye, you can't shake their hand and you certainly can't give them a hug and a kiss.” The IQSS study is far from perfect. In fact, by Prof. Nie’s own admission, it’s merely a much needed first step in the study of the Internet’s societal consequences. It did, however raise eyebrows with it’s conclusions in relation to the amount of time people spend using the internet.



The development of information technology is at the service of interests whose main ambition far from meeting any real human need, but rather the pursuit of wealth. These interests are in fact anti-social. Rhetorically speaking, why leave the house to interact with your community, when the world is just a click away? Netflix, for example, is the largest online DVD rental service in the US. The company claims to have a collection of over 65,000 tittles and an estimated five million subscribers. Netflix spends roughly $300 million annually on postage to ship an average of 1.4 million DVDs per day. While it may be convenient to order your DVDs via the click of a mouse, this service negates the social interaction implied in going to the video store and perhaps striking up a conversation with a human being about something you found interesting in the New Release isle. In most cases, the convenience of online shopping comes at the cost of actual human contact. Large companies like Amazon and Barnes & Noble offer incentives for bypassing their stores, tempting potential buyers to order straight from their websites by listing special Internet discounts. Again, the interaction between people is lost by removing the social setting in which they’d have the means to do so. In a hypothetical sense, conversations between two fans of a given author, for example, are replaced by the far less personal ‘reader reviews’ featured on, say, Amazon.com.

Ironically, the more dangerous social threat comes in the form of so-called “social networks,” like Friendster, FaceBook and Myspace. The reaction to these networks, from the 18 through 25 demographic in particular, brings to mind Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.” In Bradbury’s dystopian sci-fi novel, people develop convenient and entertaining, albeit shallow, relationships with projected images. In turn, the members of this fictional society neglect real, person to person contact with their friends and family. Myspace is currently the sixth most trafficked website on the Internet, with an average of somewhere between 15 and 20 million page views per day, according to a study by Nielsen/Netrating. The website offers an interactive, user-submitted network of “friends,” personal profiles, groups, photos, music and videos. Myspace offers a sort of virtual social life to its users. The danger with social networks like Myspace on future generations will be the increasing impoverishment of real relationships through their representation as data on someone’s online profile. Myspace is essentially replacing human activities of social interaction with online data transfers. In defense of Myspace, one might argue that Internet social networks make user’s lives easier and give them broader access to friends and strangers whose stories they find interesting or compelling. While it’s true that email bridges certain gaps of communication, it’s not the communication itself that can be detrimental to social well-being. Instead, the danger lies in building a dependency towards online communication in lieu of maintaining personal contact with friends and family, who are within a reasonably accessible distance.

The IQSS study found an inverse relationship between the amount of time people spend online and its anti-social or otherwise negative consequences. The more time people spent logged on to the Internet, the less contact they maintained with their social environment. Roughly 15 percent of those who admitted to using the Web for more than 10 hours per week reported a decrease in social activities. The study also found that Internet users in this category spend less time talking to friends and family on the phone. If Internet communication does indeed bridge gaps between loved ones, then it does so in a far less personal manner than a conversation over the phone might.

It’s not surprising that this same study found that the length of Internet use correlates with the amount of use. In other words, the longer someone has been an Internet user, the more time they spend online on a weekly basis. Given the tendency toward a decrease in social interaction and the increase in clinical depression associated with Internet addiction, the disturbing trend could become a more serious problem over the years to come. Not everyone who uses the Internet as a social network is in serious risk of becoming permanently anti-social, but ask yourself, when was the last time you opted to instant message or email a friend who’s just a few miles or a telephone call away? You may find the sound of their voice and a little eye contact a far more pleasant interaction.