Blaming The Internet For Bad Days

by Allan R. Andrews

Using the Internet can make one more depressed and lonely, say researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

How journalists interpret this research provides a lesson in judgment -- or lack of same.

The Associated Press lead says, "users of the Internet ... feel more depressed and lonely the more time they spend online."

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported, "people who spend even a few hours a week online experience higher levels of depression and loneliness than they would have if they used the computer network less frequently."

From the Los Angeles Times, we get this: "The Internet ... has also begun to make the real world a somewhat lonelier and sadder place."

More cautiously, USA Today buried the research in a broader story and said, "greater use of the Net was associated with slight increases in depression and loneliness."

My favorite comes from The Jerusalem Post: "The electronic global village of love and togetherness is a crock."

Some online commentators throw reason and caution to the wind. Reports one: "the Internet is turning its users into utterly miserable, depressed, bitter, angst-ridden, psychotic lumps of mucus." Believe it or not, that evaluation of the news gets more profane.

With that in mind, I suggest another rule of thumb be kept in mind by journalists and readers evaluating this Carnegie-Mellon research: I call it DIDO: Depression in, depression out.

I have another, less kind, rule of thumb for the researchers: BIBO: Babble in, babble out.

The Internet is a hot item these days and its users are multiplying geometrically each year. As Henry Ford's Model T was cursed for supplanting the horse and carriage, I suspect the Net will have to endure similar frontal and even more sophisticated attacks before it is recognized for the informational tool it can be.

At least three false assumptions are operating in the way journalists interpret and present this story:

1. The assumption, elevated by overzealous technocrats and McLuhanites, that Cyberspace is a truly social realm

2. The assumption that the tools of psychology -- in the Carnegie-Mellon instance, a true-false questionnaire administered to 169 families in Pittsburgh -- can tap the meaning and reality of depression and loneliness

3. The assumption that the Internet is unlike -- and somehow superior to -- the telephone, television, radio, Walkman, or automobile as a tool of socialization.

Let me elaborate on these assumptions in reverse order.

It can easily be argued that few inventions have developed into more anti-social instruments of American culture than the automobile. Each day, expressways into and out of America's cities are clogged with lone drivers in massive vehicles.

This has led to such neurotic behavior as transporting fully dressed manikins to dupe police and allow drivers to operate in lanes restricted to vehicles with passengers. Sadly, it has resulted in psychotic episodes of gunplay between harried interstate drivers caught in traffic.

No researcher that I know of has suggested that the more time one spends in a car the more lonely and depressed one becomes, though this could likely be true in our commuter society.

A similar case could be brought against the false social perceptions transmitted by talk-radio shows. We accept the dreamy non-confrontational romance of "Sleepless in Seattle" even as we decry the Internet's anonymity. The Internet, I guess, still needs a Tom Hanks or a Meg Ryan to carry it upscale.

Further, I know of no research suggesting commuters who wear earphones and tape-players to and from work -- and some while at work -- are more lonely and depressed than non-earphone wearers.

I have argued the telephone company perpetuates unreal expectations when it suggests talking on the phone is "the next best thing to being there," or that callers can "reach out and touch someone."

Is there research that hints those who spend more than two hours each day on the telephone are more lonely and depressed than those who spend less time each day on the telephone? I doubt it.

I will leave to the multiple critics of TV as a "wasteland" the scoring of its contribution to depression and loneliness.

The second assumption, far more subtle, has to do with the research methodology of modern psychology, especially that branch attempting to measure human behavior with questionnaires.

While few researchers willingly disclose this, the items included in such a true-false instrument as was used by the Pittsburgh investigators are suspect and unreliable and in need of constant cross-checks. People who respond to such surveys are notorious dissimulators, to use a technical term of the profession.

(Incidentally, I think it behooves these psychometric researchers to disclose the number of hours they personally spend on the Internet and whether or not they believe their professional activity contributes to depression and loneliness.)

There may be scores of unaccounted-for variables involved in reports of depression and loneliness in the Pittsburgh families that were surveyed.

Such research always aims to quantify its results. Thus, we get arguments that time spent on the Internet is time not spent with children and family. But quality time with children is not quantifiable. If it were so easy, researchers would be clamoring for shorter workdays and shorter school years.

One young woman admitted the Internet often interfered with cutting the grass or washing the car. Since when did such chores become the guaranteed salve for depression and loneliness?

I've known people whose time away from family and kids is directly traceable to their becoming involved with home sales or church activities. These people rarely report increased experience of depression and loneliness because they're making a few extra bucks or singing in the choir.

It's this easy acceptance of sophisticated research offering not-so-sophisticated results that raises my DIDO and BIBO warnings.

These assumptions pale, however, when placed beside the first I've listed: That the Internet is somehow a key to interpersonal relations and social togetherness.

Here I have to agree with Thomas O'Dwyer's assessment in The Jerusalem Post. The smarmy claims of interpersonal Utopia via virtual reality are a crock!

We may simply be guilty of expecting too much from what is essentially an electronic information provider.

To be sure, there are cautions to be applied with the tool we call the Internet, most of them appropriate to children.

A young person walking down a city street may be as likely to turn into the public library as into a local porno shop. So too, an elementary school child surfing the Internet may be as likely to learn about horned owls as about horny perverts. We are responsible for our children's turns and links.

Yes, there are lonely and depressed people using the Internet, but let's not fall into the error of projecting our social problems and illnesses onto our tools, or worse, expecting those tools to somehow provide life, liberty and happiness.