Web not replacing reality, study says

DALLAS – The Internet has failed to turn us all into nerds.

Despite the fears of some prognosticators in the World Wide Web’s early days, we are not hunched over our keyboards, retreating to virtual worlds to escape reality, according to a new study published Wednesday.

As a matter of fact, Americans are using the Internet and other modern communications tools to keep in touch with a wider assortment of friends, some of whom they meet in person more often because they can find them online.

In a little more than a decade, e-mail and other technologies have become vital for personal interaction, up there with phone chats and air travel. But technology hasn’t replaced those other tools, the study found.

“Our bodies still exist,” said Dr. Barry Wellman, a sociologist at the University of Toronto who co-wrote the study. “We still have needs, strong needs, to see, touch and smell people.”

The study is based on a February 2004 survey of 2,200 U.S. adults. It took nearly two years to thoroughly analyze the data and present it at academic conferences for informal peer review, but the researchers said technological developments probably haven’t significantly shifted social networks since 2004.

The study was released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a nonprofit group that explores the Web’s effects on people.

“Instead of disappearing, people’s communities are transforming,” the study says. Americans’ social ties are extending from neighborhoods and villages to “geographically dispersed social networks. People communicate and maneuver in these networks rather than being bound up in one solitary community.”

“Yet people’s networks continue to have substantial numbers of relatives and neighbors – the traditional bases of community – as well as friends and workmates.”

That conclusion is surprising, said Eric Brende, whose 2004 book “Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology” made the case for limiting one’s use of gadgets and spending more time in personal contact with other humans.

“Anecdotally, I’ve just heard of so many cases of people getting absorbed by a device,” he said.

But the study found that Web-based communications didn’t seem to detract from survey respondents’ face-to-face time or phone conversations with friends. As a matter of fact, frequent e-mailers and instant messengers talked on the phone with close friends and relatives more often than nonusers of e-mail.

And e-mail users were just about as likely as nonusers to see close friends and relatives in person once a week.

“Our impression is that most online relationships have come from people who know each other in person,” Wellman said. “You can really maintain and nurture those relationships online.”

Technology is giving people new choices in how they communicate with those friends and workmates, the study said. E-mail users, for instance, can instantaneously transmit information to others without worrying about bothering them. They know the recipients will be able to read the messages on their own time.

That’s a powerful communications technique that wasn’t available before the Internet became a popular technology. And it’s a completely different style of communication than a phone call, which demands more concentration while providing more of a personal connection.

The Internet is helpful for more than social engagements. Internet users are more likely to seek advice from close friends and relatives who are on the Web than people who lead their lives off the Web, the Pew study found.

For instance, 42 percent of Internet users sought the help of people close to them to find a new place to live, compared with 30 percent of nonusers. And 54 percent of Internet users sought their close contacts’ help in looking for information about a major illness or medical condition, compared with 41 percent of nonusers.

They also seek help more from friends who aren’t as close – what the study calls “significant ties” – when they need assistance. “The Internet is pretty much a part of how people support their social networks and how people get help to find out issues relative to their health and finances,” said Jeffrey Boase, a University of Toronto sociologist and study co-author. “It really underscores how embedded it’s become in people’s lives.”