Amidst hoodlie-clad college students home for the holidays, I sat in Starbucks today working on an essay on community life and the Internet. It’s still too rough to share with you all, but I could use some input. Some questions for the readers:
How much time do you spend on the Internet?
Do you mostly read and respond to blogs or do you communicate in other areas of the Internet?
Do you belong to any local groups or organizations?
Do you spend more time talking with people in the community or more time on the Internet?
Do you use the Internet to find local activities?
Do you spend more time communicating with Internet friends or with friends from your community?
Have you made friends/partners via the Internet that you now see face to face?
What are the advantages to interacting with people on the Internet?
What are the advantages to interacting with people face to face?
Apt. 11d 
How much time do you spend on the Internet?
Do you mostly read and respond to blogs or do you communicate in other areas of the Internet?
Do you belong to any local groups or organizations?
Do you spend more time talking with people in the community or more time on the Internet?
Do you use the Internet to find local activities?
Do you spend more time communicating with Internet friends or with friends from your community?
Have you made friends/partners via the Internet that you now see face to face?
What are the advantages to interacting with people on the Internet?
What are the advantages to interacting with people face to face?
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Sorry, I’m not quite sure what happened previiously.
1. How much time do you spend on the Internet?–more than I can afford, really, but I don’t clock it. The computer is always on. I do reward myself with a quick peek at what else is being said.
2. Do you mostly read and respond to blogs or do you communicate in other areas of the Internet?–Depends upon the issue. Blogs take up a lot of time.
3. Do you belong to any local groups or organizations? Yes, and am active in them, especially education issues.
4. Do you spend more time talking with people in the community or more time on the Internet?–more time on the internet, probably.
5. Do you use the Internet to find local activities?–yes, although my area isn’t exaclty well covered, the local weekly does a better job.
6. Do you spend more time communicating with Internet friends or with friends from your community?–I am on two very active mailing lists that have been taking up a lot of my time in the last few months.
7. Have you made friends/partners via the Internet that you now see face to face?–not really.
8. What are the advantages to interacting with people on the Internet?–asynchronicity–they write, later I read and reply. Some folks I interact with a lot are in Europe.
9. What are the advantages to interacting with people face to face?–much more real and immediate. So much is lost from tone of voice and facial expression.
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How much time do you spend on the Internet? Weekdays: Eight to ten hours a day. I am a network admin, though, so eight of those hours are while I’m at work. Weekends: Two to three hours, depends on what else I’m doing.
Do you mostly read and respond to blogs or do you communicate in other areas of the Internet? I read and respond to blogs some, maintain a livejournal, read news stuff (cnn.com, animenewsnetwork.com, fleshbot.com, nytimes.com), answer email. Occasionally I’ll run a chat client like mIRC.
Do you belong to any local groups or organizations? Like what? I’m an elected local official (borough council). Other than that, no. I am not a joiner.
Do you spend more time talking with people in the community or more time on the Internet? I spend more time on the internet than I spend associating with flesh people. I spend more of my free time alone, without the computer on, without any people around than I do interacting with either electronic or flesh people. I require a lot of alone-time.
Do you use the Internet to find local activities?
No.
Do you spend more time communicating with Internet friends or with friends from your community? About half and half.
Have you made friends/partners via the Internet that you now see face to face? I know people I’ve met through the internet whom I have met face to face but who live too far away (hundreds of miles) to see on an everyday basis. Count that how you will.
What are the advantages to interacting with people on the Internet? It’s cheaper than long distance. They don’t usually tell me how Harry Potter books are demonic tools of Satan, either. There’s also a much broader base of people to choose from. (I live in a very small, conservative town in the middle of nowhere.)
What are the advantages to interacting with people face to face? You get infinitely more feedback in face to face conversations. It’s a broadband connection. Also, frequently they’ll fix you a cup of coffee.
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I spend about 2 hours a day on the internet.
That time is broken into three categories;
Communication–blogs, a professional BB of which I’m an active member (The Rebel Outpost), and Email.
News and commentary–reading online news and commentary (Newspapers and magazines.)
Buying things, paying bills, etc–this is only a small part of the time, but is one of the most important uses.
Offline, I belong to and am very active in an evangelical church.
I spend far more time on the internet than interacting with people face-to-face.
The advantages to internet communication–a broader community (for example, I can talk to other actuaries–there aren’t many actuaries in any one place); time-independence; not needing to be around people.
The advantages of face-to-face communication. It’s more unstructured, and there are more interest cues, so you get to know people better.
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How much time do you spend on the Internet?
Aside from work, I probably spend 15-20 hours/week on the internet.
Do you mostly read and respond to blogs or do you communicate in other areas of the Internet?
In addition to blogs, I participate in online forums about areas of particular interest to me.
Do you belong to any local groups or organizations?
No. But I never have.
Do you spend more time talking with people in the community or more time on the Internet?
More time on the internet. But I disagree with most of the philosophies espoused by the hispanic immigrant community that I live near.
Do you use the Internet to find local activities?
Yes.
Do you spend more time communicating with Internet friends or with friends from your community?
Internet friends. I have no friend in the community.
Have you made friends/partners via the Internet that you now see face to face?
Some.
What are the advantages to interacting with people on the Internet?
Anonymity makes people more self-confident, often, meaning that dialogue can be more open and about a greater number of topics. It also means that I can speak my mind on things that I find particularly eggregious without having to worry about being attacked by the foaming-mouthed redneck I’m arguing with;).
What are the advantages to interacting with people face to face?
It’s easier to tell if someone is lying to you.
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I have a bunch of friends in my profession whom I see once a year at a conference. So these are people I have seen in real life but they are scattered about the country. They are my e-mail buddies — some of them I write to as often as once a week — and we talk about all kinds of things, both personal and professional. And then of course, once each year I get to spend four or five days talking to them in person, which is always wonderful.
In October of this year, I started lurking on a bunch of blogs. I think it started when a colleague send a link to his blog. I lost interest in his blog fairly quickly, but followed links to other blogs. Now I have bookmarked about a dozen blogs that I read faithfully — it’s an interconnected bunch of blogs so it feels like a community. I especially surf blogs when I am grading papers because it’s great to have people to commiserate with. I’m considering a blog of my own — I love to write — but am worried mainly that it could quickly become very time-consuming. And time is one thing I just don’t seem to have enough of.
Sorry for not anwering the questions in any kind of linear way.
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How much time do you spend on the Internet? Hmmm, six hours a day? That’s not exclusive focus, mind you, but I’m at an internet-enabled computer for at least six hours a day.
Do you mostly read and respond to blogs or do you communicate in other areas of the Internet? Blogs are a big part, but also message boards and multiplayer games.
Do you belong to any local groups or organizations? None that require going out to meetings!
Do you spend more time talking with people in the community or more time on the Internet? The latter.
Do you use the Internet to find local activities? Hockey schedules, registering for day camps, checking the library’s activities. . . yup.
Do you spend more time communicating with Internet friends or with friends from your community? The latter.
Have you made friends/partners via the Internet that you now see face to face? Only a few, because of distance.
What are the advantages to interacting with people on the Internet? You can interact virtually in little blocks of time around other chores and duties.
What are the advantages to interacting with people face to face? You can read expressions and hear tones. If it weren’t for that, I’d never interact face to face if I didn’t have to do so.
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How much time do you spend on the Internet?
I work there every day. Much of my day is spent inside the corporate environment, but I’m in and out of the net most of the day.
Do you mostly read and respond to blogs or do you communicate in other areas of the Internet?
I use internet-enabled email for my personal account, but in terms of communication, I mainly read blogs—sometimes I respond to them.
Do you belong to any local groups or organizations?
Nope. No time.
Do you spend more time talking with people in the community or more time on the Internet?
People at work—who are all over the world, which makes it interesting. So, neither.
Do you use the Internet to find local activities?
Movie scheds, school websites, nothing very open-ended.
Do you spend more time communicating with Internet friends or with friends from your community?
My closest friends are mainly not local, so via email for the most part.
Have you made friends/partners via the Internet that you now see face to face?
I’ve made some friends that I’ve never seen, mainly in terms of work-based networking via other friends. Distribution lists are an interesting community building tool. One really powerful aspect of the net is the ability to track down Old Friends. I’ve done that once or twice, which really wonderful results.
What are the advantages to interacting with people on the Internet?
If you are a good writer, you can present a more carefully considered response.
What are the advantages to interacting with people face to face?
All the additional body language. In my work, I deal with people all over the globe. I have found that a lot of remote work can happen successfully, if there is some initial and occasional ongoing face to face contact.
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Thanks all. That was really interesting. (Laughing at Teep who wrote about “flesh people”) I will share more when I think I’m ready.
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The General Social Survey Internet module has answers to some of these questions if you’re interested in a nationally representative sample (data for 2000 and 2002 are publicly available, I’m not sure what part of the module, if any, was rerun in 2004). Some of the questions may not be so much about “how many hours” but “how many contacts using various media” but that could be of interest here as well.
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