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11/29/18, 2(53 PMDoes social media bring us closer – or make us loners? - The Globe and Mail

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Does social media bring us closer – or make us loners?

WENCY LEUNG PUBLISHED JANUARY 14, 2013 UPDATED MAY 11, 2018

It started as a marketing gimmick. In 2000, Mitch Maddox, also known as

DotComGuy, holed himself up in a Dallas townhouse for a year, relying on

visitors and his Internet connection to interact with the outside world. At the

time, it was a novelty to be plugged in 24 hours a day, visiting chat rooms,

making purchases online and having every moment captured on streaming

video for the rest of the world to see.

For Maddox, being continuously wired was a stunt, devised to promote

electronic commerce. Now, it is a way of life. Although we may not physically

shut ourselves in as DotComGuy did, we often live in our own bubbles,

A Dallas, Texas computer systems manager who legally changed his name to Dotcomguy, sits in his empty apartment.

REUTERS

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LIFE

11/29/18, 2(53 PMDoes social media bring us closer – or make us loners? - The Globe and Mail

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simultaneously reaching out and closing ourselves off to others through the

use of technology. At business meetings, we pay partial attention while

responding to e-mails. When we are with our friends, we will stop to send text

messages and Twitter updates. While we are connected, we are rarely fully

engaged with those immediately around us.

"It's almost like I experienced what a lot of people maybe are experiencing

now, only I experienced it 12 years ago," Maddox says in a phone interview

from his home in Dallas, explaining that his year of wired living forced him to

be constantly "on" for all his Internet followers.

Our obsession with smart devices and social media seems alarming. As U.S.

psychologist Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More

From Technology and Less from Each Other, wrote in The New York Times

last year, "we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection." With 2011

census data showing more Canadians living alone than in couple households

with children for the first time, it would be easy to assume that people are

becoming more alienated than ever. But technology's impact on our social

lives may not be as detrimental, or as powerful, as we might think.

In a 2011 study, Cornell University researcher Matthew Brashears examined

national U.S. survey results that indicated a considerable decline in the

number of people Americans consider close friends. Data from the General

Social Survey, which offers a glimpse into the social environments of the

average American, showed that respondents in 2004 had confided in roughly

two friends on matters they considered important to them during the

previous six months. This, Brashears noted, was down from an average of

three friends in 1985.

More strikingly, the proportion of Americans who were socially isolated –

those who discussed important matters with no one – had surged to 23 per

cent from 8 per cent over the same period.

Brashears points out, however, that the social survey results should be taken

with a grain of salt. First, the proportion of people who report having no

discussions of important matters fluctuates wildly from year to year, and a

sizable fraction of them may simply feel they have no important matters to

discuss.

Another interpretation, he says, is that people's social networks are not

necessarily shrinking; rather, they may be changing how they define their

friends. "What I suspect is happening is that we're seeing a reallocation of all

your associates into different categories," he said in an interview. "So fewer

people are being considered as discussion partners, but maybe more of them

are people you would spend time with."

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In fact, recent research suggests that social media and modern

communications technologies have either no effect, or a slightly positive

effective, on people's face-to-face relationships and social circles, Brashears

says. "So if you use Facebook and you use all this stuff, you may have slightly

more friends than you might have otherwise."

Technology's bad rap can be partly attributed to how quickly it has become a

fixture in our lives, Brashears suggests. Consider that Facebook came into

general use only in 2006, the same year Twitter's early prototype was created.

And although early research indicated that people who were highly plugged

into the Internet had smaller social circles, those studies were conducted in

the 1990s when the Internet was the domain of a relatively small group of

early adapters.

S TO RY C O N T I N U E S B E L O W A D V E RT I S E M E N T

But plugging in does not appear to help us make friends either. In a study

released last year, University of Waterloo postdoctoral researcher Amanda

Forest found that individuals who have low self-esteem were more likely to

consider Facebook a safe place to express themselves and engage with others,

without the awkwardness of face-to-face interaction. Yet they also were more

likely to be downers online, posting updates that exhibited sadness, anger,

fear and anxiety instead of more positive emotions. Forest found that coders

who were asked to assess their Facebook messages found people with low

self-esteem less likeable than those with high self-esteem on the basis of their

status updates.

"The same people who are more negative in person seem to be the ones who

are more negative on Facebook," Forest says, suggesting that the way we act

online is more or less an extension of how we act in person. Even though we

try to portray ourselves a certain way on social-media sites, we do this to

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some extent in real life as well, she says.

Back in Dallas, Maddox says his early immersion in electronic

communications has caused him to moderate his use of mobile devices and

social media. After leaving the office each evening, the software company

employee and self-proclaimed technology junkie avoids checking e-mail on

his iPhone. And even though he appreciates social-media sites, he does not

check them every day. He says he logs onto Facebook only once every four

months.

"I think it's great," he says, "but I had my year of that and it was just so much

that I just kind of set those boundaries for myself."

FOLLOW WENCY LEUNG ON TWITTER @WENCYLEUNG

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