As far as I can tell - the study was funded by likely web boosters who expected counterdepressive effects - the between group differences were tiny, and only significant due to the sample size
Still, because the results were presented in the usual "ignore all subtleties" manner -- thereby justifying blowing more than a million on the study -- I'm sure that if the results play out at all at a popular level it will be to discourage net use. "Sarah, get off that thing, you're weakening your network by as much as 2.6 acquaintances."
Randy Earnest
|
|As I've said here before, the Internet, as it becomes increasingly
|accessible, should be very valuable in doing this. Maybe I'm being
|paranoid, but I wonder if the heavy media play being given to that
|recent Web study -- the one that suggests spending time in cyberspace
|can make you depressed -- is being fueled by an Establishment
|recognition of the Web's pro-populist potential.
|
|Carl Remick
|