A97.
Katz,
J. E.
& Rice, R. E. (2009). Falling
into the Net: Main Street America playing games and making friends
online. Communications of the ACM, 52(9), 1-2.
This paper
reviews
the
findings of 2007 US
national survey of the general population to identify how the Internet
is affecting
the lives of ordinary people. A
nationally representative random survey of 1404 people finds that, on
balance,
there is almost no evidence to support the harsh contentions that the
Internet
is harmful or breeds sad, lonely people as has been asserted.
Neither is there evidence to indicate that
the Internet is male-dominated. Rather,
the survey findings indicate that millions of people find community on
line,
and many new friendships have been made. In fact, a significant
fraction
of those friendships have extended from the virtual to the face-to-face
world. About 5 percent engage in online multiplayer games while
20
percent feel they belong to an online community (with little difference
in
either between men and women). So rather than people "dropping out"
of ordinary life to become hermits, data show that the Internet is a
pro-social
medium, resource and network that brings people together.
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