Tag Archives: Internet

The Internet and social media mean our reference group is everyone and not just family and friends

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Related to the post yesterday about the power of statistics on college campuses, here is a similar matter: how much do we compare our behavior today to “everyone” or “larger patterns” rather than just family and friends around us?

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The connection is not just the Internet and social media and the way they connect us to more people and narratives. This is a change in statistics: we think we can see larger patterns and we can access more information.

Whether what we see on social media is a real pattern might not matter. (A reminder: relatively few people are active on Twitter.) We see more online and we can see what people are highlighting. This might appear as a pattern.

Not too long ago, we were more limited in our ability to compare our actions to others. The mass media existed but in more packaged forms (television, radio, music, films, newspapers, etc.) rather than the user-driven content of social media. The comparisons to that mass media still mattered – I remember sociologist Juliet Schor’s argument in The Overspent American of how increased TV watching was related to increased consumption – but people’s ties to their family and friends in geographic proximity were likely stronger. Or, in Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone world, people spent a lot more time in local organizations and groups rather than in the broad realms of the Internet and social media.

Now, we can easily see how our choices or circumstances compare to others. Even odd situations we find ourselves in quickly be matched across a vast set of platforms for similarities and differences. Whether our tastes are mainstream or unusual, we can see how they stack up. If I am on college campus X on one side of the country, I can easily see what is happening on college campuses around the world.

Even as the Internet and social media is not fully representative of people and society, it does offer a sample regarding what other people are doing. We may care less about what the people directly near us are doing and we can quickly see what broader groups are doing. We can live our everyday lives with a statistical approach: look at the big N sample and adjust accordingly.

If every life event was sponsored, baseball edition

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I enjoy listening to baseball games on the radio. The pace of the game, the voices of the announcers, and the ability to do other things while listening add up to an enjoyable experience.

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Except for one growing trend: the number of commercial reads throughout the game. At this point, it seems like almost every baseball event has a sponsor. Strikeouts, walks, doubles, home runs, the fifth inning, the seventh inning…you get the idea. Baseball has a lot of small events and apparently they can be attached to an advertiser for the right price.

I am aware of multiple factors behind this. Radio is a dying business. Live sports is one of the few shining spots where there are certain to be listeners (or viewers). Commercialization is alive and well. There is money to be made here.

But, I can only imagine how this might spread to all areas of life. Go beyond the Internet and social media ads tied to your browsing and shopping habits. You tie your shoes; brought to you by [blank]. You run the dishwasher; brought to you by [blank]. You read a book; brought to you by [blank].

At this point, there do not seem to be any officials guardrails against more and more of this happening. People can push back but this has consequences. If I do not like the baseball ads, I can stop listening. But, if we move to more immersive devices – Google Glass, virtual reality headsets, a house full of Internet equipped objects – this will be very hard to push against or escape.

AIM away messages and a “basic form of social liberty”

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AIM away messages provided a way for users to show that they were not available:

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Sometimes you had to step away. So you threw up an Away Message: I’m not here. I’m in class/at the game/my dad needs to use the comp. I’ve left you with an emo quote that demonstrates how deep I am. Or, here’s a song lyric that signals I am so over you. Never mind that my Away Message is aimed at you.

I miss Away Messages. This nostalgia is layered in abstraction; I probably miss the newness of the internet of the 1990s, and I also miss just being … away. But this is about Away Messages themselves—the bits of code that constructed Maginot Lines around our availability. An Away Message was a text box full of possibilities, a mini-MySpace profile or a Facebook status update years before either existed. It was also a boundary: An Away Message not only popped up as a response after someone IM’d you, it was wholly visible to that person before they IM’d you.

Messaging today, whether through texting or apps, does not work the same way:

Catapulting even further back into the past for a moment: Old-fashioned phone calls used to, and sometimes still do, start with “Hey, you free?” Santamaria points out. “You were going to tell me if you could talk before we started the conversation.” There’s a version of this today—someone might preface their message with “Not urgent, respond when you can,” for example—but for the most part, we just send the text message without consideration, Santamaria says. Interruption is the default.

The ability to walk away from communication and the demands it makes on a person struck me as similar to one of the three “basic forms of social liberty” humans had before settling in cities and large societies. Anthropologists David Graeber and David Wengrow say the second form was “the freedom to ignore or disobey commands issued by others.” Text messages, emails, and messages in apps create a pressure for someone to respond. To not have these digital “commands,” one practically not use apps and devices.

Is this the freedom we have traded to use social media, the Internet, and smartphones? People can unplug but it is difficult to do that and still participate in regular social life today. Saying no to messages or refusing to respond will likely not garner many friends or close connections. And related to the first form of freedom, “the freedom to move away or relocate from one’s surroundings,” the messages and apps can follow us anywhere there is Internet access or cell coverage.

These platforms succeed by encouraging messaging and connections. But, what if a basic human freedom is the one to say no to that interaction when desired?

Another downside of the information age: dealing with endless spam

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People today have access to so much information, including spam:

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The average American received roughly 42 spam texts just in the month of March, according to new data from RoboKiller, an app that blocks spam calls and texts…

There were more spam calls last month than in any of the previous six months, per YouMail’s Robocall Index…

Spam emails rose by 30% from 2020 to 2021, according to a January report from the Washington Post…

There was an unprecedented increase in social media scams last year, according to data from the Federal Trade Commission. Many scams were related to bogus cryptocurrency investments.

As the article notes, it keeps going in part because the spammers are successful enough. Yet, it would be worth also seeing the bigger picture: how much time and mental effort is expended fighting off spam efforts? Even if the majority of people relatively quickly discard the emails and texts or even just glance quickly at them and then ignore them, what does this all add up to?

The glut of information we all face, some positive and some negative, requires time and mental space. Just to push it aside requires a choice. We may think it does not affect us – I have heard many people say the equivalent of “advertising does not affect me” – but it does.

Could we envision a future world where we only get the firehose of information that we truly want and discard all the rest? Imagine the echo chambers or media bubbles possible today plus the technical means or financial means to only get all that we want to handle? I am not sure how advertising or alternative viewpoints might fit into all of this but I would guess there would be at least a few people willing to pay a lot to achieve this state.

Social media and the Internet is not necessarily representative of society but they do overlap in important ways with the offline world

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Watching dueling online and social media narratives can be quite a disorienting experience. Who is right? What are the facts? Does this story/anecdote/experience reflect and influence broader patterns in society?

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It is this last question that interests me as a sociologist who has studied social network site use among emerging adults. How much does online activity reflect daily life among all Americans or people around the world? How much influence does online activity exert?

It is not necessarily reflective of everyone and their experiences. For example, a small segment of users can create a lot of content and drive traffic. Of those who use social media, not everyone engages much, and others do not use social media at all or use other platforms. What happens online is not always generalizable to broader social activity.

Yet, the actors and actions online can have a powerful influence in both the online and offline world. The way material is presented in social media and the Internet – or in any form of media – can influence beliefs and behaviors. Even if many people are not aware of something online or do not find it themselves, it can be important for those who make decisions or those who are following a particular conversation.

This is another reason that we should consider the online and offline realms as overlapping spheres, not separate worlds. Yes, there are some actors who may act very differently online than offline. Yet, even these behaviors are joined together within an individual who is operating in both realms. Online discussions and trends find their way to the offline world as offline activity gets picked up online. Money, power, influence, and beliefs pass back and through the two realms.

Recognizing this does not make it easier to reconcile competing online narratives. But, it does highlight how these are not just meaningless online discussions; they are linked to offline patterns.

Reconsidering social media and Internet use after an online-filled COVID-19

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The Internet and social media were critical tools for many during COVID-19 with uses ranging from connecting with family and friends to work to activism to going to school. As COVID-19 winds down, does this mean we should reconsider how much time we spend with these technologies? Here is one conclusion:

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Two years ago, I was deleting and undeleting my Instagram account, begging every expert I could find to tell me exactly how to live healthily with the internet in my pocket. In 2021, to do the same would seem a little silly. Netflix’s subscriber growth may be slowing, and Tinder videochats may soon fall out of favor, but it’s hard to imagine that a Great Offlining is really in the cards. Instead, we could be heading for a Great Rebalancing, where we reconfigure how we do our work and how we organize our time on the internet. We’ve grown more aware of how we rely on one another—online as well as off—and of the tools we have or could build for responding to a crisis. The biggest tech companies’ accrual of power remains one of the most serious problems of my lifetime, but I no longer talk about the internet itself as if it were an external and malignant force, now that I’ve lived in such intimate contact with it for so long.

I’m sure I’ll change my mind about everything I’ve just said, but sometimes you just need to time-stamp the moment. Going back through my essays from 2019, I was struck by how easily I had misremembered what the cultural conversation was about back then. Jenny Odell never argued that people should go offline completely. Rather, she told me that deleting your apps or throwing your phone in the ocean would represent a failure to recognize that “we actually really need something like social media.” The desire to go online is human, and “there’s nothing wrong with that part.” We just have to keep reminding ourselves why we’re doing it.

I think it is always a good idea to ask this question about many things with which we spend this time: how important is this to me? Is my time use what I want or did I just fall into this pattern? For better or worse, sometimes it takes a drastic change or crisis to ask this question. It is one thing to use a computer for work or browse social media, another to be on Zoom for hours because you cannot be in the office or go to school. If COVID-19 offers people the opportunity to step back and think again about what they want to do with their time, that would be good.

And I would hope that many would say they do not need social media or the Internet as much as they did in the past year. There are many worthwhile things to do, ranging from movement and exercise, reading, pursuing a non-work project or hobby, playing a game, interacting with the people around you, among other options.

More broadly, it is relatively easy to slip into particular time patterns during the day that may or may not be desired. The average American watches 4+ hours of television a day; is that planned and/or desired or does it just happen? Do people take the time they want to eat or not? Is work more time-consuming that people want? If you add up all of these hours across days, weeks, months, and years, it can be shocking to see how much is spent on certain activities. If people have priorities in what they want to do in life, it should be evident in their time use.

(On the other hand, I do not think it is that useful to micromanage your time to the level some have. I recently read about someone famous who scheduled their day in five minute increments in order to make sure things got done. There is a level of attention and time needed to do this that I would not find worthwhile.)

Trying to fit all the election results on one television screen

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I watched briefly a number of election night broadcasts last night. One conclusion I came to: there is way too much data to fit on a television screen. And if you want more of the data, you need the Internet, not television.

The different broadcasts tried similar variations: flipping back and forth between a set of anchors and pundits at desks and analysts at a smart board showing election results from different states and locations. They have done this for enough election nights that the process is pretty established.

While they do this, there is often a lot of data on the screen. This could include: a map of the United States with states shaded; a chryon at the bottom with scrolling news; another panel at the bottom flipping through results from different races; and people talking, sometimes in connection to the data on the screen and sometimes. If the analyst at the smart board is on the screen, there is another set of maps to consider.

CNN broadcast, November 4, 2020

This is a lot to take in and it might not be enough. The broadcasts try to balance all of the levels of government – from the presidential race to congressional districts – and are flipping back and forth. I appreciated seeing the more simple approach of PBS which went with a lot less data on the screen, bigger images of the talking heads, and simple summary graphics of the winners.

But, if you want the data, the television broadcast does not cut it. Numerous websites offered single pages where one could monitor all of the major races in real-time. Want to keep up on both local and national races? Have two pages open. Want reaction? Add social media in a third window. Use multiple Internet-connected devices including smartphones, tablets, and computers (and maybe Internet-enabled televisions).

Furthermore, web pages give users more control over the data they are seeing. Take the final 2020 election forecast from FiveThirtyEight:

On one page, readers could see multiple presentations of data plus explanations. Want to scroll through in 10 seconds and see the headlines? Fine. Want to spend 5 minutes analyzing the various graphics? That works. Want to click on all the links for the metholodogy and commentary? A reader could do that too.

The one big advantage television offers is that it offers commentary and faces in real-time plus the potential for live coverage from the scene (such as images of gatherings for candidates) and feeling like the viewer is present when major announcements are made. The Internet has approximations of this – lively social media accounts, live blogs – but it is not the same feeling. (Of course, when you have more than ten live election night broadcasts available on your television, the audience will be pretty split there as well.) Elections are not just about data for many; they also include emotions, presence, and the potential for important memories.

Given these differences in media, I did what I am guessing many did last night: I consumed both television and Internet/social media coverage. Neither are perfect for the task. I had to go to sleep eventually. And whoever can figure out how to combine the best elements of both for election nights may do very well for themselves.

Time travel to the words that arrived with McMansion in 1990

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According to Merriam-Webster, the word McMansion first appeared in 1990. What words came with it? From the Time Traveler in 1990:

This is an interesting list of terms that have now existed for thirty years. Like the McMansion, these refer to newer phenomena that either did not exist prior to 1990 or did not have a reason to be named.

But, just because terms were introduced does not necessarily mean that they were used at the same rate over time. Using Google NGram Viewer, here are some of the terms in comparison:

Take out the tech terms – World Wide Web and spam – and now some of the patterns regarding other social phenomena are more clear:

Since this covers books, there might be a lag compared to other sources. For example, my own analysis of the use of the term McMansion in the New York Times and Dallas Morning News found the term had higher rates of usage from roughly 2005 to 2008 (and then plateaus, just as it does with book usages several years later). But, it also takes some time for terms to be used widely. Indeed, three of the five terms above steadily rise in usage.

Given the time travel back to 1990, it might be hard for any new words to compete with computer or Internet related terms. The introduction and spread of the Internet shaped many aspects of society. At the same time, new understandings of sexuality and relationships are pretty influential as well. Perhaps thirty years is not enough to judge the impact of these words just yet.

Online real estate shift during COVID-19 reinforces the private nature of American homes

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The ways in which COVID-19 has pushed more real estate activity online – virtual tours, making offers without physically seeing a home – doubles down on the private dimensions of residences in the United States. Here is my argument:

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Already, Americans tend to see their homes as castles, refuges from the outside world, spaces where they can do what they want, settings in which they tend to their immediate family and consume a lot of media, financial investments for their future. Add this to suburbs devoted to homeownership and driving and the home is truly a private place.

The downside is this: there is often limited community and civic engagement. Neighbors get along by pleasantly or passively leaving each other alone. Private spaces are very distinct from public spaces and public spaces where a true diversity of people might actually mix, whether a shopping mall or a library, are relatively rare. Trust in institutions is low and participation in community groups has declined.

Putting homes for sale on the Internet just further reduces the community or neighborhood element of a residence. If you look at enough real estate pictures, you see some patterns: lots of interior shots but limited images of how the residence interacts with surrounding spaces or what may be just down the street. For example, you may get a shot of a backyard but it is often facing the rear of the house, not out into the neighborhood. Or, you might get a pleasant image of the downtown of a community or a local park or a common room within an apartment building without much sense of how those spaces are used.

This is similar to how HGTV often shows homes. There may be sweeping shots of a neighborhood or location but the focus is always on the single housing unit. The interior and its features are the focus. The neighborhood or surroundings do not matter unless it has to do with proximity to work or family or to note the character of surrounding buildings (which is often connected to property values and the perceived niceness of the location).

There are some tools that could help potential homebuyers check out the neighborhood and community. A virtual house tour could be followed by a Google Street View drive through the nearby blocks. Instead of just relying on walkability and school scores on real estate websites, a potential buyer could go to local websites or message boards to try to get a sense of community life. Yet, any of these Internet attempts pale to talking to people in the community and experiencing the surrounding area. People should make some efforts to get to know their community before they consider moving there.

Seeing homes and residences as commodities that can be evaluated solely through the Internet downplays civic life or at least pushes it into the background. Divorcing a home from its surroundings can be done but it is impoverishing in the long run for property owners and communities. When we emerge from a COVID-19 pandemic, I hope the online aspect of real estate does not hamper efforts to rebuild community and social life when such work is sorely needed.

“Zoom towns” better have good Internet capabilities

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“Zoom towns” are areas of the United States that are gaining residents due to people trying to move away from COVID-19 cases:

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Like a lot of other vacation destinations — the Hamptons, Cape Cod, Aspen and so on — the Truckee housing market is booming during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s up over 23% since last year, according to data from Redfin, a real estate brokerage. Truckee is part of a trend that realtors and journalists are calling “Zoom towns,” places that are booming as remote work takes off.

There are numerous ways that these new full-time residents might transform their new communities, particularly if they are people with more resources.

But one issue for these growing communities involves infrastructure: how prepared are they to host more Internet traffic? Since March, much activity has moved online: work, school, social gatherings, public meetings, etc. Are there some places better equipped to handle all of this increased streaming? Are “zoom towns” the kinds of places that have robust Internet capacity? This might not be a big problem in suburbs of major cities (such as New Yorkers headed out to New Jersey) or for people who move from major city to major city (from San Francisco to Austin) but it could be for others who head to smaller communities or vacation towns.

What the COVID-19 pandemic could do is help remind Americans of the need to improve networks that enable computer, smartphone, and tablet activity. We do not just need to maintain what already exists; this pandemic has highlighted what was already going to happen: an increased need for streaming and conducting activity online. Without good infrastructure development in this area, future opportunities may not exist. Or, particular locations or kinds of places can be harmed or left behind, leading to or growing digital divides. From rural communities to poorer communities in and around cities, residents need decent Internet speeds to live during COVID and flourish afterward.