The internet creates a huge range of often-novel choices from which end-users construct their own adaptive behaviors. The important determining factors in personal friendships, marriages, and other relationships remain with the individual. Which isn’t to say the internet makes no difference. It does. The internet facilitates anti-social behaviors like identity theft, and positive behaviors like keeping in close touch with relatives in faraway places, to such a degree that they become almost unimaginable in the pre-Internet age. My sense is that, once you eliminate outliers and freakish behaviors, the internet will continue to bestow tremendous opportunities for social growth on most people, in most circumstances.
Internet connectivity maintains, expands, and enhances friendships: both strong and weaker.
Getting Serious Online: As Americans Gain Experience, They Pursue More Serious Activities - Lee Rainie
Internet users—veteran users especially—report that their use of email and the Web has changed the amount of time they spend watching TV, shopping in stores, and reading newspapers. One-quarter of all Internet users say that the Internet has decreased the time they spend watching television, with fully one-third (31%) of veterans saying this. Nearly one in five (18%) say Internet use has meant they spend less time shopping in stores, with 28% of Internet veterans and 29% of those who have bought something online saying this. The Internet has also prompted some users to spend less time reading newspapers; 14% say this, with 21% of Internet veterans reporting a decline in newspaper reading. However, Internet users, and veterans in particular, are active online surfers for news, so they might be simply switching time with the paper to time with the online version.
A gradual defection from TV will change in time: when TV becomes socialized, and is simply another sort of shared stream.
How Americans view the internet’s impact on groups - Lee Rainie, Kristen Purcell, Aaron Smith
When asked to assess the impact of the internet on the ability of social, civic, professional, religious or spiritual groups to engage in a number of activities, Americans express generally positive views. Nearly seven in ten (68%) believe that the internet has a “major impact” on the ability of groups to communicate with their members, and roughly six in ten feel that the internet has a “major impact” on the ability of groups to draw attention to issues (62%), connect with other groups (60%), impact society at large (59%), and raise money (52%). For each of the nine group-based activities we measured in this survey, three-quarters of Americans or more feel that the internet has had at least some impact (if only a minor one) on the activity in question.
With poll numbers like that the internet should run for president.
