Web of Ideas: Netty Friends
Posted on:: February 14th, 2005
I’m leading another discussion at the Berkman Center this Wednesday. This time the topic is:
Netty Friends
There’s no doubt that we’re forming relationships over the Internet that feel something like friendship. But are they different enough from real-world friendships that they need their own term? How are they different? Are they better or worse? Is there a version of Gresham’s Law
at work here: Inferior Net-based relationships are driving out good real-world ones? Are there gender-based differences? Come to an open discussion this Wednesday…
It’s open to all. 6-7:30pm on Wed., Feb. 16, at the Baker House (map). The pizza it is free. [Technorati tag: berkman]
Categories: Uncategorized dw
You mean, you’re going to discuss netbased relationships and we have to BE IN THE ROOM??!
McLuhan is rolling in his grave…
Tip o’ the hat, Dave. Nice to see you asking these questions.
I was doing some limited research in connection with something I’m pursuing along these lines and came across an interesting statistic for which no immediate explanation leaps to mind. Several possible candidates, and probably a combination of them or something else entirely. But take a look at the rate of teenage suicides for the last several decades. I’d offer a link, but I was using a dead tree resource. If I recall correctly, and if the data was good, the teen suicide rate started to decline in 1990, and seems to be continuing to decline. Good news! But why?
Cell phones? Internet? Prozac? Mental health counseling? All of the above, none of the above?
FWIW, suicide statistics are considered somewhat “soft” since many go unreported due to the stigma of suicide.
I don’t recall now, but it would be interesting to look at the rates for all other age groups at the same time. If teens declined faster, and I believe they’ve all declined, but I won’t swear to that, then perhaps the faster adoption of connecting technologies like cell phones and internet access among young people is a possible explanation to be explored.
Don’t worry, I’m not about to become a digital pollyanna, but you gotta go where the data seems to suggest. I’m not doing a rigorous academic investigation, but I was somewhat surprised that suicide rates had declined. There are some other downsides though. We might wish to consider the state of parent/child relationships when one or both parties invest signficant amounts of time and attention to online interactions and relationships. Do we value good relationships between parent and child? If I recall correctly, peers are more influential to teens than parents after early adolescence. Wouldn’t swear to that either, but I think it’s close. With with easy access to so many more potential “peers” is this a good thing or maybe not so good?
Then there’s the issue of MMORPGs like Evercrack, which affects both teens and adults and absorbs significant quanitities of time and attention resources from many players.
Then there’s the issue of predatory relationships – soliciting for sex and suicide. I don’t think we have a very good handle on the rates of solicitation for underage sex, so it’s kind of hard to weigh this as an issue affecting relationships.
And as “embodied beings,” something I believe you subscribe to (and I do too, I learned that one from you!), what component of the “friendship” relationship is missing in these “virtual” relationships. It seems to me that they can be very low-cost, low-investment, and so perhaps they impair learning how to sustain close “real” friendships where reciprocity and opportunities for conflict are greater.
Wish I could be there.
I really, really would love to attend something like this. I’m utterly fascinated by this subject. Alas, the travel is impossible. You’ll be blogging about it, David?
I highly recommend Tim Burke’s recent essay “Burke’s Home for Imaginary Friends.”
Well, that begs the question of how do these virtual relationships change when the friendship ends; to wit, what happens when an on-line friend dies?
This is more than an academic question for me; my friend and fellow blogger Mike Wolf died suddenly last week. The grief and shock experienced by those who knew him has been accompanied by a secondary wave of grieving by those who knew him only as an online presence. And, most curiously, a third round of remembrances have sprung up from people who have only come to his site after his death and never knew him, in the flesh or on-line, while he was alive.
I’m not quite sure what to make of it, but it’s very interesting.
Very interesting pointer, Liz.
I second that, Liz. Likewise, thank you Frankenstein. Very sad. And thank you, too, Dave, for the thoughtful comments.
For those interested in Youth Development (and possible reasons for declining teen suicide rates)should be interested in…
Myths and Realities About American Families by H. Stephen Glenn
“Surveys in 1962-63 revealed that 85% of all fathers said raising kids was primarily a mother’s responsibility. Now surveys show that about 40% of all fathers think raising children is a joint responsibility. Twenty-five years ago when I taught family-oriented workshops, about 10% of the participants were fathers. Today, fathers make up about 35% of the attendees.”
One way to reflect on the benefits of online relationship for young people, would be to see in what ways the “40 Developmental Assets” that young people need can be build “online”.
The “Five Action Strategies” to create positive change states: “as you strengthen relationships within and between these spheres of influence across the community, you will build a web of interconnected efforts that support one another. Long-lasting success happens by merging the asset-building capacities of all community members-in all the settings where the lives of adults and youth intersect.”
I think online connections can make a difference for young people.
Some more interesting links, Richard. The increased role of fathers in parenting was something that didn’t occur to me when I was looking at the suicide rates. (Which, I think it can be said, are still too high. And, to digress a bit, the rates are higher for males than females and higher in western states than eastern ones. I wonder if there may not be some connection with isolation, which is physically or geographically greater in western states with much lower population densities.)
I read the 40 Developmental Assets and on first impression, I think their quite reasonable. But I think an equally important thing to think about is how online activities might impede the creation or use of those assets, which is the direction I’m tending at the moment.
FWIW, I don’t believe the potentially negative effects of online interactions are limited to only children and teenagers, but adults as well. And I also don’t believe that online relationships or interactions are exclusively the source of these potential problems. Rather, I believe that our technologies, to include the automobile, radio, television, portable music and video players, and now the mobile phone and the internet, have, in effect, afforded us what is little more than a “junk food” diet in terms of human interactions. We are able to receive many of the same neurological rewards from these limited, low-cost, low-effort, “relationships” and I believe our overall mental health is suffering in some way, much as obesity is now being recognized as a health problem. Obesity is also a product of our technological success, with easy access to large amounts of appealing foods, and a relatively sedentary lifestyle brought about by labor-saving devices. I hope to go into this at greater length in my own space at some time in the near future, but I am concerned there is a problem that is, at this point, somewhat unrecognized. Or, at the least, it is a question that is receiving too little attention from the high-profile “authorities” who promote the ceaseless development and deployment of these technologies.
I also wish to say I’m not a Luddite, or a tree-hugging technophobe. I’m an engineer by training, a gadget lover, and I invest signficant amounts of my own time into online interactions. But I’ve begun to look a little more closely at what that has meant for me, and what it might mean for the people around me.
I think we’re all familiar with many of the negative aspects of a society that orients itself around the automobile, but I don’t think we, as kind of a “global mind,” recognized those negatives in time to help other cultures to avoid some of them. I wonder why we should be so secure in our faith regarding the desirability of the networked world that we should be making it a priority to thrust this capability onto peoples and cultures who have not yet been affected by it.
Thanks for sharing more comments Dave.
Dr. Glenn was an amazing speaker – whom I have only seen on video. In his talks he mentions the impact of technology on human interaction . Something along the lines that long horse and wagon rides promoted intergenerational conversations – what else was there to do but talk? By car – trips are shorter or the kids have their portable music players so hardly a word is exchanged. He mentioned being on a sidewalk when a school bus pulled up and it was silent. All the kids had earphones on. The bus driver complained about being lonely!
He provided the following background:
“In 1963, the first high school graduating class of America’s Baby Boomers turned student achievement downward,(teenage suicides, drug use upward) in spite of the fact that previous generations had continued to register improvement during a depression and two world wars…
At the end of the war (WWII), 12 million people (6 million soldiers and 6 million women who had been working in the factories) found themselves with a choice to go back to the farm or stay in the urban areas that would become our metropolitan cities. They decided to stay in the cities.
An additional 5 million couples joined those already there, which radically changed the fabric of America’s society.
In a decade this country turned itself upside down and became 70% urban and 30 percent rural. Strong family networks and small community support systems were transformed almost overnight as a completely new environment was born.”
Another of Dr. Glenn’s great quotes: “It used to be that kids wore jeans because their parents were poor, now parents are poor because their kids wear jeans.”