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The Internet is the decisive technology of the Information Age, as the electrical engine was the vector of technological transformation of the Industrial Age. This global network of computer networks, largely based nowadays on platforms of wireless communication, provides ubiquitous capacity of multimodal, interactive communication in chosen time, transcending space. The Internet is not really a new technology: its ancestor, the Arpanet, was first deployed in 1969 (Abbate 1999). But it was in the 1990s when it was privatized and released from the control of the U.S. Department of Commerce that it diffused around the world at extraordinary speed: in 1996 the first survey of Internet users counted about 40 million; in 2013 they are over 2.5 billion, with China accounting for the largest number of Internet users. Furthermore, for some time the spread of the Internet was limited by the difficulty to lay out land-based telecommunications infrastructure in the emerging countries. This has changed with the explosion of wireless communication in the early twenty-first century. Indeed, in 1991, there were about 16 million subscribers of wireless devices in the world, in 2013 they are close to 7 billion (in a planet of 7.7 billion human beings). Counting on the family and village uses of mobile phones, and taking into consideration the limited use of these devices among children under five years of age, we can say that humankind is now almost entirely connected, albeit with great levels of inequality in the bandwidth as well as in the efficiency and price of the service.

At the heart of these communication networks the Internet ensures the production, distribution, and use of digitized information in all formats. According to the study published by Martin Hilbert in Science (Hilbert and López 2011), 95 percent of all information existing in the planet is digitized and most of it is accessible on the Internet and other computer networks.

The speed and scope of the transformation of our communication environment by Internet and wireless communication has triggered all kind of utopian and dystopian perceptions around the world.

As in all moments of major technological change, people, companies, and institutions feel the depth of the change, but they are often overwhelmed by it, out of sheer ignorance of its effects.

The media aggravate the distorted perception by dwelling into scary reports on the basis of anecdotal observation and biased commentary. If there is a topic in which social sciences, in their diversity, should contribute to the full understanding of the world in which we live, it is precisely the area that has come to be named in academia as Internet Studies. Because, in fact, academic research knows a great deal on the interaction between Internet and society, on the basis of methodologically rigorous empirical research conducted in a plurality of cultural and institutional contexts. Any process of major technological change generates its own mythology. In part because it comes into practice before scientists can assess its effects and implications, so there is always a gap between social change and its understanding. For instance, media often report that intense use of the Internet increases the risk of alienation, isolation, depression, and withdrawal from society. In fact, available evidence shows that there is either no relationship or a positive cumulative relationship between the Internet use and the intensity of sociability. We observe that, overall, the more sociable people are, the more they use the Internet. And the more they use the Internet, the more they increase their sociability online and offline, their civic engagement, and the intensity of family and friendship relationships, in all cultures—with the exception of a couple of early studies of the Internet in the 1990s, corrected by their authors later (Castells 2001; Castells et al. 2007; Rainie and Wellman 2012; Center for the Digital Future 2012 et al.).

Thus, the purpose of this chapter will be to summarize some of the key research findings on the social effects of the Internet relying on the evidence provided by some of the major institutions specialized in the social study of the Internet. More specifically, I will be using the data from the world at large: the World Internet Survey conducted by the Center for the Digital Future, University of Southern California; the reports of the British Computer Society (BCS), using data from the World Values Survey of the University of Michigan; the Nielsen reports for a variety of countries; and the annual reports from the International Telecommunications Union. For data on the United States, I have used the Pew American Life and Internet Project of the Pew Institute. For the United Kingdom, the Oxford Internet Survey from the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, as well as the Virtual Society Project from the Economic and Social Science Research Council. For Spain, the Project Internet Catalonia of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC); the various reports on the information society from Telefónica; and from the Orange Foundation. For Portugal, the Observatório de Sociedade da Informação e do Conhecimento (OSIC) in Lisbon. I would like to emphasize that most of the data in these reports converge toward similar trends. Thus I have selected for my analysis the findings that complement and reinforce each other, offering a consistent picture of the human experience on the Internet in spite of the human diversity.

Given the aim of this publication to reach a broad audience, I will not present in this text the data supporting the analysis presented here. Instead, I am referring the interested reader to the web sources of the research organizations mentioned above, as well as to selected bibliographic references discussing the empirical foundation of the social trends reported here.

Technologies of Freedom, the Network Society, and the Culture of Autonomy

In order to fully understand the effects of the Internet on society, we should remember that technology is material culture. It is produced in a social process in a given institutional environment on the basis of the ideas, values, interests, and knowledge of their producers, both their early producers and their subsequent producers. In this process we must include the users of the technology, who appropriate and adapt the technology rather than adopting it, and by so doing they modify it and produce it in an endless process of interaction between technological production and social use. So, to assess the relevance of Internet in society we must recall the specific characteristics of Internet as a technology. Then we must place it in the context of the transformation of the overall social structure, as well as in relationship to the culture characteristic of this social structure. Indeed, we live in a new social structure, the global network society, characterized by the rise of a new culture, the culture of autonomy.

Internet is a technology of freedom, in the terms coined by Ithiel de Sola Pool in 1973, coming from a libertarian culture, paradoxically financed by the Pentagon for the benefit of scientists, engineers, and their students, with no direct military application in mind (Castells 2001). The expansion of the Internet from the mid-1990s onward resulted from the combination of three main factors:

• The technological discovery of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee and his willingness to distribute the source code to improve it by the open-source contribution of a global community of users, in continuity with the openness of the TCP/IP Internet protocols. The web keeps running under the same principle of open source. And two-thirds of web servers are operated by Apache, an open-source server program.
• Institutional change in the management of the Internet, keeping it under the loose management of the global Internet community, privatizing it, and allowing both commercial uses and cooperative uses.
• Major changes in social structure, culture, and social behavior: networking as a prevalent organizational form; individuation as the main orientation of social behavior; and the culture of autonomy as the culture of the network society.

I will elaborate on these major trends.

Our society is a network society; that is, a society constructed around personal and organizational networks powered by digital networks and communicated by the Internet. And because networks are global and know no boundaries, the network society is a global network society. This historically specific social structure resulted from the interaction between the emerging technological paradigm based on the digital revolution and some major sociocultural changes. A primary dimension of these changes is what has been labeled the rise of the Me-centered society, or, in sociological terms, the process of individuation, the decline of community understood in terms of space, work, family, and ascription in general. This is not the end of community, and not the end of place-based interaction, but there is a shift toward the reconstruction of social relationships, including strong cultural and personal ties that could be considered a form of community, on the basis of individual interests, values, and projects.

The process of individuation is not just a matter of cultural evolution, it is materially produced by the new forms of organizing economic activities, and social and political life, as I analyzed in my trilogy on the Information Age (Castells 1996–2003). It is based on the transformation of space (metropolitan life), work and economic activity (rise of the networked enterprise and networked work processes), culture and communication (shift from mass communication based on mass media to mass self-communication based on the Internet); on the crisis of the patriarchal family, with increasing autonomy of its individual members; the substitution of media politics for mass party politics; and globalization as the selective networking of places and processes throughout the planet.

But individuation does not mean isolation, or even less the end of community. Sociability is reconstructed as networked individualism and community through a quest for like-minded individuals in a process that combines online interaction with offline interaction, cyberspace and the local space. Individuation is the key process in constituting subjects (individual or collective), networking is the organizational form constructed by these subjects; this is the network society, and the form of sociability is what Rainie and Wellman (2012) conceptualized as networked individualism. Network technologies are of course the medium for this new social structure and this new culture (Papacharissi 2010).

As stated above, academic research has established that the Internet does not isolate people, nor does it reduce their sociability; it actually increases sociability, as shown by myself in my studies in Catalonia (Castells 2007), Rainie and Wellman in the United States (2012), Cardoso in Portugal (2010), and the World Internet Survey for the world at large (Center for the Digital Future 2012 et al.). Furthermore, a major study by Michael Willmott for the British Computer Society (Trajectory Partnership 2010) has shown a positive correlation, for individuals and for countries, between the frequency and intensity of the use of the Internet and the psychological indicators of personal happiness. He used global data for 35,000 people obtained from the World Wide Survey of the University of Michigan from 2005 to 2007. Controlling for other factors, the study showed that Internet use empowers people by increasing their feelings of security, personal freedom, and influence, all feelings that have a positive effect on happiness and personal well-being. The effect is particularly positive for people with lower income and who are less qualified, for people in the developing world, and for women. Age does not affect the positive relationship; it is significant for all ages. Why women? Because they are at the center of the network of their families, Internet helps them to organize their lives. Also, it helps them to overcome their isolation, particularly in patriarchal societies. The Internet also contributes to the rise of the culture of autonomy.

The key for the process of individuation is the construction of autonomy by social actors, who become subjects in the process. They do so by defining their specific projects in interaction with, but not submission to, the institutions of society. This is the case for a minority of individuals, but because of their capacity to lead and mobilize they introduce a new culture in every domain of social life: in work (entrepreneurship), in the media (the active audience), in the Internet (the creative user), in the market (the informed and proactive consumer), in education (students as informed critical thinkers, making possible the new frontier of e-learning and m-learning pedagogy), in health (the patient-centered health management system) in e-government (the informed, participatory citizen), in social movements (cultural change from the grassroots, as in feminism or environmentalism), and in politics (the independent-minded citizen able to participate in self-generated political networks).

There is increasing evidence of the direct relationship between the Internet and the rise of social autonomy. From 2002 to 2007 I directed in Catalonia one of the largest studies ever conducted in Europe on the Internet and society, based on 55,000 interviews, one-third of them face to face (IN3 2002–07). As part of this study, my collaborators and I compared the behavior of Internet users to non-Internet users in a sample of 3,000 people, representative of the population of Catalonia. Because in 2003 only about 40 percent of people were Internet users we could really compare the differences in social behavior for users and non-users, something that nowadays would be more difficult given the 79 percent penetration rate of the Internet in Catalonia. Although the data are relatively old, the findings are not, as more recent studies in other countries (particularly in Portugal) appear to confirm the observed trends. We constructed scales of autonomy in different dimensions. Only between 10 and 20 percent of the population, depending on dimensions, were in the high level of autonomy. But we focused on this active segment of the population to explore the role of the Internet in the construction of autonomy. Using factor analysis we identified six major types of autonomy based on projects of individuals according to their practices:

a) professional development b) communicative autonomy c) entrepreneurship d) autonomy of the body e) sociopolitical participation f) personal, individual autonomy

These six types of autonomous practices were statistically independent among themselves. But each one of them correlated positively with Internet use in statistically significant terms, in a self-reinforcing loop (time sequence): the more one person was autonomous, the more she/he used the web, and the more she/he used the web, the more autonomous she/he became (Castells et al. 2007). This is a major empirical finding. Because if the dominant cultural trend in our society is the search for autonomy, and if the Internet powers this search, then we are moving toward a society of assertive individuals and cultural freedom, regardless of the barriers of rigid social organizations inherited from the Industrial Age. From this Internet-based culture of autonomy have emerged a new kind of sociability, networked sociability, and a new kind of sociopolitical practice, networked social movements and networked democracy. I will now turn to the analysis of these two fundamental trends at the source of current processes of social change worldwide.

The Rise of Social Network Sites on the Internet

Since 2002 (creation of Friendster, prior to Facebook) a new socio-technical revolution has taken place on the Internet: the rise of social network sites where now all human activities are present, from personal interaction to business, to work, to culture, to communication, to social movements, and to politics.

Social Network Sites are web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.

(Boyd and Ellison 2007, 2)

Social networking uses, in time globally spent, surpassed e-mail in November 2007. It surpassed e-mail in number of users in July 2009. In terms of users it reached 1 billion by September 2010, with Facebook accounting for about half of it. In 2013 it has almost doubled, particularly because of increasing use in China, India, and Latin America. There is indeed a great diversity of social networking sites (SNS) by countries and cultures. Facebook, started for Harvard-only members in 2004, is present in most of the world, but QQ, Cyworld, and Baidu dominate in China; Orkut in Brazil; Mixi in Japan; etc. In terms of demographics, age is the main differential factor in the use of SNS, with a drop of frequency of use after 50 years of age, and particularly 65. But this is not just a teenager’s activity. The main Facebook U.S. category is in the age group 35–44, whose frequency of use of the site is higher than for younger people. Nearly 60 percent of adults in the U.S. have at least one SNS profile, 30 percent two, and 15 percent three or more. Females are as present as males, except when in a society there is a general gender gap. We observe no differences in education and class, but there is some class specialization of SNS, such as Myspace being lower than FB; LinkedIn is for professionals.

Thus, the most important activity on the Internet at this point in time goes through social networking, and SNS have become the chosen platforms for all kind of activities, not just personal friendships or chatting, but for marketing, e-commerce, education, cultural creativity, media and entertainment distribution, health applications, and sociopolitical activism. This is a significant trend for society at large. Let me explore the meaning of this trend on the basis of the still scant evidence.

Social networking sites are constructed by users themselves building on specific criteria of grouping. There is entrepreneurship in the process of creating sites, then people choose according to their interests and projects. Networks are tailored by people themselves with different levels of profiling and privacy. The key to success is not anonymity, but on the contrary, self-presentation of a real person connecting to real people (in some cases people are excluded from the SNS when they fake their identity). So, it is a self-constructed society by networking connecting to other networks. But this is not a virtual society. There is a close connection between virtual networks and networks in life at large. This is a hybrid world, a real world, not a virtual world or a segregated world.

People build networks to be with others, and to be with others they want to be with on the basis of criteria that include those people who they already know (a selected sub-segment). Most users go on the site every day. It is permanent connectivity. If we needed an answer to what happened to sociability in the Internet world, here it is:

There is a dramatic increase in sociability, but a different kind of sociability, facilitated and dynamized by permanent connectivity and social networking on the web.

Based on the time when Facebook was still releasing data (this time is now gone) we know that in 2009 users spent 500 billion minutes per month. This is not just about friendship or interpersonal communication. People do things together, share, act, exactly as in society, although the personal dimension is always there. Thus, in the U.S. 38 percent of adults share content, 21 percent remix, 14 percent blog, and this is growing exponentially, with development of technology, software, and SNS entrepreneurial initiatives. On Facebook, in 2009 the average user was connected to 60 pages, groups, and events, people interacted per month to 160 million objects (pages, groups, events), the average user created 70 pieces of content per month, and there were 25 billion pieces of content shared per month (web links, news stories, blogs posts, notes, photos). SNS are living spaces connecting all dimensions of people’s experience. This transforms culture because people share experience with a low emotional cost, while saving energy and effort. They transcend time and space, yet they produce content, set up links, and connect practices. It is a constantly networked world in every dimension of human experience. They co-evolve in permanent, multiple interaction. But they choose the terms of their co-evolution.

Thus, people live their physical lives but increasingly connect on multiple dimensions in SNS.

Paradoxically, the virtual life is more social than the physical life, now individualized by the organization of work and urban living.

But people do not live a virtual reality, indeed it is a real virtuality, since social practices, sharing, mixing, and living in society is facilitated in the virtuality, in what I called time ago the “space of flows” (Castells 1996).

Because people are increasingly at ease in the multi-textuality and multidimensionality of the web, marketers, work organizations, service agencies, government, and civil society are migrating massively to the Internet, less and less setting up alternative sites, more and more being present in the networks that people construct by themselves and for themselves, with the help of Internet social networking entrepreneurs, some of whom become billionaires in the process, actually selling freedom and the possibility of the autonomous construction of lives. This is the liberating potential of the Internet made material practice by these social networking sites. The largest of these social networking sites are usually bounded social spaces managed by a company. However, if the company tries to impede free communication it may lose many of its users, because the entry barriers in this industry are very low. A couple of technologically savvy youngsters with little capital can set up a site on the Internet and attract escapees from a more restricted Internet space, as happened to AOL and other networking sites of the first generation, and as could happen to Facebook or any other SNS if they are tempted to tinker with the rules of openness (Facebook tried to make users pay and retracted within days). So, SNS are often a business, but they are in the business of selling freedom, free expression, chosen sociability. When they tinker with this promise they risk their hollowing by net citizens migrating with their friends to more friendly virtual lands.

Perhaps the most telling expression of this new freedom is the transformation of sociopolitical practices on the Internet.

Communication Power: Mass-Self Communication and the Transformation of Politics

Power and counterpower, the foundational relationships of society, are constructed in the human mind, through the construction of meaning and the processing of information according to certain sets of values and interests (Castells 2009).

Ideological apparatuses and the mass media have been key tools of mediating communication and asserting power, and still are. But the rise of a new culture, the culture of autonomy, has found in Internet and mobile communication networks a major medium of mass self-communication and self-organization.

The key source for the social production of meaning is the process of socialized communication. I define communication as the process of sharing meaning through the exchange of information. Socialized communication is the one that exists in the public realm, that has the potential of reaching society at large. Therefore, the battle over the human mind is largely played out in the process of socialized communication. And this is particularly so in the network society, the social structure of the Information Age, which is characterized by the pervasiveness of communication networks in a multimodal hypertext.

The ongoing transformation of communication technology in the digital age extends the reach of communication media to all domains of social life in a network that is at the same time global and local, generic and customized, in an ever-changing pattern.

As a result, power relations, that is the relations that constitute the foundation of all societies, as well as the processes challenging institutionalized power relations, are increasingly shaped and decided in the communication field. Meaningful, conscious communication is what makes humans human. Thus, any major transformation in the technology and organization of communication is of utmost relevance for social change. Over the last four decades the advent of the Internet and of wireless communication has shifted the communication process in society at large from mass communication to mass self-communication. This is from a message sent from one to many with little interactivity to a system based on messages from many to many, multimodal, in chosen time, and with interactivity, so that senders are receivers and receivers are senders. And both have access to a multimodal hypertext in the web that constitutes the endlessly changing backbone of communication processes.

The transformation of communication from mass communication to mass self-communication has contributed decisively to alter the process of social change. As power relationships have always been based on the control of communication and information that feed the neural networks constitutive of the human mind, the rise of horizontal networks of communication has created a new landscape of social and political change by the process of disintermediation of the government and corporate controls over communication. This is the power of the network, as social actors build their own networks on the basis of their projects, values, and interests. The outcome of these processes is open ended and dependent on specific contexts. Freedom, in this case freedom of communicate, does not say anything on the uses of freedom in society. This is to be established by scholarly research. But we need to start from this major historical phenomenon: the building of a global communication network based on the Internet, a technology that embodies the culture of freedom that was at its source.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century there have been multiple social movements around the world that have used the Internet as their space of formation and permanent connectivity, among the movements and with society at large. These networked social movements, formed in the social networking sites on the Internet, have mobilized in the urban space and in the institutional space, inducing new forms of social movements that are the main actors of social change in the network society. Networked social movements have been particularly active since 2010, and especially in the Arab revolutions against dictatorships; in Europe and the U.S. as forms of protest against the management of the financial crisis; in Brazil; in Turkey; in Mexico; and in highly diverse institutional contexts and economic conditions. It is precisely the similarity of the movements in extremely different contexts that allows the formulation of the hypothesis that this is the pattern of social movements characteristic of the global network society. In all cases we observe the capacity of these movements for self-organization, without a central leadership, on the basis of a spontaneous emotional movement. In all cases there is a connection between Internet-based communication, mobile networks, and the mass media in different forms, feeding into each other and amplifying the movement locally and globally.

These movements take place in the context of exploitation and oppression, social tensions and social struggles; but struggles that were not able to successfully challenge the state in other instances of revolt are now powered by the tools of mass self-communication. It is not the technology that induces the movements, but without the technology (Internet and wireless communication) social movements would not take the present form of being a challenge to state power. The fact is that technology is material culture (ideas brought into the design) and the Internet materialized the culture of freedom that, as it has been documented, emerged on American campuses in the 1960s. This culture-made technology is at the source of the new wave of social movements that exemplify the depth of the global impact of the Internet in all spheres of social organization, affecting particularly power relationships, the foundation of the institutions of society. (See case studies and an analytical perspective on the interaction between Internet and networked social movements in Castells 2012.)

The Internet, as all technologies, does not produce effects by itself. Yet, it has specific effects in altering the capacity of the communication system to be organized around flows that are interactive, multimodal, asynchronous or synchronous, global or local, and from many to many, from people to people, from people to objects, and from objects to objects, increasingly relying on the semantic web. How these characteristics affect specific systems of social relationships has to be established by research, and this is what I tried to present in this text. What is clear is that without the Internet we would not have seen the large-scale development of networking as the fundamental mechanism of social structuring and social change in every domain of social life. The Internet, the World Wide Web, and a variety of networks increasingly based on wireless platforms constitute the technological infrastructure of the network society, as the electrical grid and the electrical engine were the support system for the form of social organization that we conceptualized as the industrial society. Thus, as a social construction, this technological system is open ended, as the network society is an open-ended form of social organization that conveys the best and the worse in humankind. Yet, the global network society is our society, and the understanding of its logic on the basis of the interaction between culture, organization, and technology in the formation and development of social and technological networks is a key field of research in the twenty-first century.

We can only make progress in our understanding through the cumulative effort of scholarly research. Only then we will be able to cut through the myths surrounding the key technology of our time. A digital communication technology that is already a second skin for young people, yet it continues to feed the fears and the fantasies of those who are still in charge of a society that they barely understand.

These references are in fact sources of more detailed references specific to each one of the topics analyzed in this text.

Abbate, Janet. A Social History of the Internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.

Boyd, Danah M., and Nicole B. Ellison. “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13, no. 1 (2007).

Cardoso, Gustavo, Angus Cheong, and Jeffrey Cole (eds). World Wide Internet: Changing Societies, Economies and Cultures. Macau: University of Macau Press, 2009.

Castells, Manuel. The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture. 3 vols. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996–2003.

———. The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

———. Communication Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

———. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2012.

Castells, Manuel, Imma Tubella, Teresa Sancho, and Meritxell Roca.

La transición a la sociedad red. Barcelona: Ariel, 2007.

Hilbert, Martin, and Priscilla López. “The World’s Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information.” Science 332, no. 6025 (April 1, 2011): pp. 60–65.

Papacharissi, Zizi, ed. The Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Networking Sites. Routledge, 2010.

Rainie. Lee, and Barry Wellman. Networked: The New Social Operating System. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.

Trajectory Partnership (Michael Willmott and Paul Flatters). The Information Dividend: Why IT Makes You “Happier.” Swindon: British Informatics Society Limited, 2010. http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/info-dividend-full-report.pdf

Selected Web References.   Used as sources for analysis in the chapter

Agência para a Sociedade do Conhecimento. “Observatório de Sociedade da Informação e do Conhecimento (OSIC).” http://www.umic.pt/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3026&Itemid=167

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT. “Features, Press and Policy.” http://www.bcs.org/category/7307

Center for the Digital Future. The World Internet Project International Report. 4th ed. Los Angeles: USC Annenberg School, Center for the Digital Future, 2012. http://www.worldinternetproject.net/_files/_Published/_oldis/770_2012wip_report4th_ed.pdf

ESRC (Economic & Social Research Council). “Papers and Reports.” Virtual Society. http://virtualsociety.sbs.ox.ac.uk/reports.htm

Fundación Orange. “Análisis y Prospectiva: Informe eEspaña.” Fundación Orange. http://fundacionorange.es/fundacionorange/analisisprospectiva.html

Fundación Telefónica. “Informes SI.” Fundación Telefónica. http://sociedadinformacion.fundacion.telefonica.com/DYC/SHI/InformesSI/seccion=1190&idioma=es_ES.do

IN3 (Internet Interdisciplinary Institute). UOC. “Project Internet Catalonia (PIC): An Overview.” Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, 2002–07. http://www.uoc.edu/in3/pic/eng/

International Telecommunication Union. “Annual Reports.” http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/sfo/annual_reports/index.html

Nielsen Company. “Reports.” 2013. http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/reports/2013.html?tag=Category:Media+ and+Entertainment

Oxford Internet Surveys. “Publications.” http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/oxis/publications

Pew Internet & American Life Project. “Social Networking.” Pew Internet. http://www.pewinternet.org/Topics/Activities-and-Pursuits/Social-Networking.aspx?typeFilter=5

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The Internet is the decisive technology of the Information Age, and with the explosion of wireless communication in the early twenty-first century, we can say that humankind is now almost entirely connected, albeit with great levels of inequality in bandwidth, efficiency, and price.

People, companies, and institutions feel the depth of this technological change, but the speed and scope of the transformation has triggered all manner of utopian and dystopian perceptions that, when examined closely through methodologically rigorous empirical research, turn out not to be accurate. For instance, media often report that intense use of the Internet increases the risk of isolation, alienation, and withdrawal from society, but available evidence shows that the Internet neither isolates people nor reduces their sociability; it actually increases sociability, civic engagement, and the intensity of family and friendship relationships, in all cultures.

Our current “network society” is a product of the digital revolution and some major sociocultural changes. One of these is the rise of the “Me-centered society,” marked by an increased focus on individual growth and a decline in community understood in terms of space, work, family, and ascription in general. But individuation does not mean isolation, or the end of community. Instead, social relationships are being reconstructed on the basis of individual interests, values, and projects. Community is formed through individuals’ quests for like-minded people in a process that combines online interaction with offline interaction, cyberspace, and the local space.

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Globally, time spent on social networking sites surpassed time spent on e-mail in November 2007, and the number of social networking users surpassed the number of e-mail users in July 2009. Today, social networking sites are the preferred platforms for all kinds of activities, both business and personal, and sociability has dramatically increased — but it is a different kind of sociability. Most Facebook users visit the site daily, and they connect on multiple dimensions, but only on the dimensions they choose. The virtual life is becoming more social than the physical life, but it is less a virtual reality than a real virtuality, facilitating real-life work and urban living.

Because people are increasingly at ease in the Web’s multidimensionality, marketers, government, and civil society are migrating massively to the networks people construct by themselves and for themselves. At root, social-networking entrepreneurs are really selling spaces in which people can freely and autonomously construct their lives. Sites that attempt to impede free communication are soon abandoned by many users in favor of friendlier and less restricted spaces.

Perhaps the most telling expression of this new freedom is the Internet’s transformation of sociopolitical practices. Messages no longer flow solely from the few to the many, with little interactivity. Now, messages also flow from the many to the many, multimodally and interactively. By disintermediating government and corporate control of communication, horizontal communication networks have created a new landscape of social and political change.

Networked social movements have been particularly active since 2010, notably in the Arab revolutions against dictatorships and the protests against the management of the financial crisis. Online and particularly wireless communication has helped social movements pose more of a challenge to state power.

The Internet and the Web constitute the technological infrastructure of the global network society, and the understanding of their logic is a key field of research. It is only scholarly research that will enable us to cut through the myths surrounding this digital communication technology that is already a second skin for young people, yet continues to feed the fears and the fantasies of those who are still in charge of a society that they barely understand.

Read the full article here.

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14 Ways the Internet Improves Our Lives

• March 1, 2022
• Advocacy , General

The internet is a near ubiquitous aspect of modern life — making it easy to take for granted all the skills, tools, opportunities, and benefits that it provides. In celebration of CTN’s 14 years of digital inclusion work, we’ve compiled 14 ways that internet access and digital skills can improve someone’s quality of life and h ow the internet helps us in our daily life.

Table of Contents

14 Benefits of the Internet and How the Internet Has Made Society Better:

Providing better access to health information and options., making it easier to communicate with friends and family..

Offering a wealth of online activities and experiences to enjoy remotely.

Promoting workforce development skills., increasing access to social services and benefits., decreasing isolation and loneliness., empowering people with a sense of agency., improving education and learning opportunities..

Participating in democracy and civic duties.

Searching and applying for jobs., maintaining curiosity, finding new interests, and pursuing hobbies., improving the economy for everyone., strengthening communities and social ties., creating a better world..

While the benefits of the internet and technology are clear, accessing them is still a challenge for millions of Americans. This means we must work to build an equitable and inclusive internet that improves the lives of all people — regardless of their age, income level, or primary language. Want to help us expand digital equity and inclusion? Check out our volunteer and partner opportunities to get involved!

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• Has the Internet Improved Society? Exploring an Argumentative Essay

In today's digital age, the internet has transformed the way we live, work, and learn. However, the impact of this technological revolution on society is a subject of ongoing debate. In this argumentative essay , we will explore the question: Has the internet made society better ? From improved access to information and communication to the rise of online education and remote work opportunities, the internet has undoubtedly brought about significant advancements. On the other hand, concerns about privacy, misinformation, and digital divide continue to challenge the notion of a better society. Join us as we delve into the complexities of this topic and critically examine the effects of the internet on our world .

Impact of Online Resources on Mathematics Learning

Collaboration and communication in virtual math communities, the role of online assessment tools in mathematics education, overcoming barriers to access to quality math education, fostering a growth mindset through online learning platforms, ethical considerations and digital literacy in online mathematics education, how has the internet impacted the way mathematics is taught in schools, what are the benefits of using online resources for learning mathematics, can the internet help bridge the achievement gap in mathematics education, are there any drawbacks to relying heavily on technology for teaching mathematics, how does the accessibility of online math tools affect student engagement and understanding.

Online resources have revolutionized the way students learn and practice mathematics. Platforms such as Khan Academy and Wolfram Alpha provide interactive lessons, step-by-step solutions, and practice problems that cater to individual student needs. This accessibility has greatly enhanced students' understanding of mathematical concepts and their ability to apply them in real-world scenarios.

The internet has facilitated collaboration among students and educators through virtual math communities and forums. Students can now connect with peers from around the world to discuss mathematical problems, share insights, and seek help when needed. This collaborative approach not only fosters a sense of community but also promotes a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts through diverse perspectives.

Online assessment tools have streamlined the process of evaluating students' mathematical proficiency. Adaptive quizzes and tests can provide instant feedback to students, allowing them to identify areas of improvement and track their progress over time. Furthermore, these tools enable educators to tailor their teaching strategies to address specific learning gaps and challenges faced by students.

The internet has played a crucial role in breaking down barriers to access quality math education. Students in remote areas or underserved communities now have the opportunity to access high-quality math resources and instruction online. This democratization of education has helped bridge the gap in educational opportunities and empower students from diverse backgrounds to excel in mathematics.

Online learning platforms promote a growth mindset by providing students with a personalized learning experience. With the abundance of resources available online, students are encouraged to embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, and view mistakes as opportunities for growth. This shift in mindset not only enhances students' mathematical skills but also nurtures their overall approach to learning and problem-solving.

As online education continues to proliferate, it is essential to address ethical considerations and promote digital literacy in mathematics education. Educators must teach students how to navigate online resources responsibly, critically evaluate information, and uphold academic integrity in their mathematical endeavors. By instilling these values, students can harness the full potential of the internet as a tool for learning and growth in mathematics.

frequently asked questions

The internet has revolutionized the way mathematics is taught in schools by providing access to online resources , interactive tools, and virtual classrooms that enhance learning experiences for students.

Online resources provide accessibility to a wide range of mathematical content , offer interactive learning experiences, and allow for individualized learning paths.

Yes , the internet can help bridge the achievement gap in mathematics education by providing access to resources , online tutoring, interactive tools, and personalized learning experiences for students of all backgrounds.

Yes , there are drawbacks to relying heavily on technology for teaching mathematics.

The accessibility of online math tools positively impacts student engagement and understanding in Mathematics education.

In conclusion, it is evident that the internet has brought about significant changes in society, including in the field of Mathematics education. While there are valid arguments on both sides of the debate, it is crucial to continue exploring how we can harness the potential of the internet to improve learning outcomes and access to mathematical resources for all individuals. As we navigate the digital age, it is essential to critically evaluate the impact of the internet on our educational systems and ensure that we are using technology to enhance, rather than hinder, the learning experience.

If you want to know other articles similar to Has the Internet Improved Society? Exploring an Argumentative Essay you can visit the category General Education .

Michaell Miller

Michael Miller is a passionate blog writer and advanced mathematics teacher with a deep understanding of mathematical physics. With years of teaching experience, Michael combines his love of mathematics with an exceptional ability to communicate complex concepts in an accessible way. His blog posts offer a unique and enriching perspective on mathematical and physical topics, making learning fascinating and understandable for all.

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The internet’s connectivity brings positives and negatives

By Barbara Gutierrez [email protected] 01-10-2022

The internet has revolutionized the world. Every facet of people’s lives has been touched by this technology—from work and entertainment to education, shopping, and personal relationships.

The network certainly has made many things easier. We can shop, study, and work from home. We can instantly communicate with anyone near or far. And we have a wealth of information at our fingertips.

But what has the internet taken from us? Has our attention span shortened? Do we spend any time doing nothing at all, or do we need to feel connected 24 hours a day?

Pamela Paul, editor of The New York Times Book Review, has published “100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet.”   

The book’s description notes: “In 100 glimpses of that pre-internet world, Paul presents a captivating record of the world before cyberspace—from voicemails to blind dates to punctuation to civility. There are the small losses: postcards, the blessings of an adolescence largely spared of documentation, the Rolodex, and the genuine surprises at high school reunions. But there are larger repercussions, too: weaker memories, the inability to entertain oneself, and the utter demolition of privacy.”

Members of the University of Miami community share their thoughts about the internet, not only indicating what society may have lost, but also what has been gained from this life-changing technology.

Dayton Whitman, sophomore majoring in theatre arts

What have we lost to the internet?

What have we gained?

“We have gained a level of awareness. Growing up in America, I am born with a sense of ignorance. I do not understand what it is to grow up in a Third World country, but with social media and news, at least I am able to see what is going on. Everything is at my fingertips; so, I can research it. That is important because people who have gained awareness have started nonprofits or tried to start solutions to different problems. You cannot find solutions if you don’t know that there is a problem.”

Ilana Simmons, first-year student majoring in global health on the pre-med track  

“We have gained a better ability to stay in touch with people. So, for instance, I can stay in touch with friends who go to other colleges. Through the internet I stay in touch with them. It would be harder if there were no internet. It is easier to study with the internet. Although at times the system can crash.”

Jacob Li, a senior studying biomedical engineering What have we lost to the internet?

“Accessibility. It is easier for people to find information. But it is a double-edged sword because the information we find may not always be credible. People think that the independent research they do is Googling but that is not really research. It may not be a credible source.” 

Alexander Klein, sophomore majoring in exercise physiology

“We have gained new ways to communicate. We have gained other ways to communicate with people who may be in another part of the country or the world. It may be someone you have never met before. It is easier to meet people that way.”

Nicholas Iwanicki, University Archivist, University of Miami Libraries

What have we gained from the internet? 

“Perhaps the greatest gain from the internet is the access that researchers have to historic materials around the world. This is a massive advantage for scholars who cannot travel to use research collections or may access digitized resources from the field. Connecting audiences to digital content is vital for knowledge creation and discovery not just in academia, but for the general public as well.” 

Laura Kohn-Wood, dean, School of Education and Human Development

What have we gained from the internet?

“As an educator (and an old, pre-world wide web person), the internet has dramatically changed our lives. With regard to education, the internet has given us the ability, within seconds, to access an almost infinite amount of information and knowledge. If knowledge is power, then all of us have become more powerful when we are able to access the array of intellectual resources, references, information, and science.

Of course, the danger of this democratizing of knowledge is the lack of curated information and the proliferation of misinformation, myths, and lies. Therefore, the need for internet literacy in the broader area of media literacy is critical, particularly for children to develop the skills to navigate their information-saturated world.

“The other aspect of increased knowledge access for educators, particularly in higher education is the premium that should be placed on innovative pedagogy and learning sciences. If people can use a search engine to quickly find the answer to a question on their smartphone, more of their time in the classroom should be spent engaging with information more intensively and more tangibly. The learning curve is steepest when one attempts to apply knowledge to relevant areas, incorporate information, synthesize and creatively problem solve. Pedagogical approaches like discussion or problem-based learning, service learning, and active engagement can reinforce and deepen the integration of new knowledge to advance student comprehension and competency.”

Antonio Mora, visiting assistant professor of practice, School of Communication

What has the internet taken from us?

“As often happens with great innovations, the internet has brought with it all sorts of negative consequences. Social media has coarsened the political dialogue, contributing greatly to the extreme political polarization we have in the U.S. The ‘democratization’ of news, where anyone now has access to an online ‘megaphone,’ has increased fake news and the propagation of conspiracy theories. On a more individual level, the internet and our mobile devices have allowed people to recede into their cocoons and reduced in-person interactions. I also worry that people are reading less.”

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What Are the Benefits of the Internet? Argumentative Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

The Internet has been one of the biggest inventions that have made a great difference in the lives of many people in the world. Its introduction has come with an assortment of benefits which in one way or another has made life to be so easy. Many people say that the Internet has reduced the world into easily accessible global village since it helps people to access information from every part of the world with just some simple clicks on the keyboards and keypads of computers and related gadgets.

Internet use allows people who are interested and have the knowledge about it access a lot of information which range from different subjects hence it is able to meet the needs of diversified population that use the Internet. In this light, the invention of the Internet has been accompanied by many benefits that has turned the world into a global village, thus people can easily access any information at the click of a button.

To begin with, the Internet has come up with ways that enable man to undertake many tasks that were in the past deemed as cumbersome since it has almost every material that is needed to tackle all sorts of problems in various fields of life. For instance, scholars and research organizations had difficult time perusing through piles of books to do their research work. These have been made so easy with the introduction of the Internet since it has all the relevant materials that are needed to carry any kind of research work.

Likewise, in the past years, people suffered greatly due to congestion that occurred in processing transactions in the banking halls. Queuing was the only way through which people received banking services. With the invention of the Internet banking was made so easy due to the fact most of the operations of the financial institutions have been made accessible through the Internet, therefore making it possible for people to conduct all their bank transactions without any difficulty.

Through the Internet people can be able to transfer money electronically, check their bank account balances and withdraw and deposit money via the Internet; this is also referred to as Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). This has also been accessible unlimitedly since the Internet is operational all the time.

Another important aspect is that the Internet has made it easy for people to do business via telecommunication media, thus having an opportunity to explore the international market.

This was a hard nut to crack before the introduction of the Internet because someone wishing to purchase goods in international markets had to use traditional means of communication such as television, phones, and newspaper. But with the coming of the Internet this has become very simple. People nowadays can easily buy goods online and at the same companies can display their commodities on the Internet. All transactions are made online hence making international trade very convenient.

Consequently, online trading has also led to great revolution in the innovativeness due to the fact that companies are able to share ideas with others which trigger them to become dynamic in the way they perform their business operations so as to be able to meet the demands of the international market. Advertisement of goods is also very easy since companies need to launch their websites where they post their commodities and prices.

This was very difficult in the past since advertisement was only limited to television, radio and print media which are relatively expensive and do not advertise the products of each company that has subscribed with them throughout. But the Internet is at all times advertising all the commodities that have been posted on it.

More importantly, the Internet has acted as a channel through which people access employment opportunities since most employers advertise jobs through agents that are online. At the same the invention of the Internet has created many job opportunities that are associated with its existence. For instance, jobs such as creation of web pages and programs have come up due to the Internet.

Internet has also led to the establishment of businesses that deal with Internet such as cyber cafés, online research agencies, search engines such as Google and social networks that are private businesses. In addition to these, individuals have also started Internet service providing firms where people subscribe at a fee to get connected to the Internet. All these cases give a clear implication of the Internet as far as availability of employment is concerned.

In the education field, the Internet has made scholarly work to be so easy since it provides all the materials that student require in doing their research and answering assignments given to them. Learners can also use the Internet to undertake their normal studies since it contains all the academic resources that are needed.

Research work has also been streamlined by the invention of the Internet since researchers from different institutes around the world can share ideas and facts. The Internet has also made learning so easy due to the fact that tutors in learning institutes can send and receive learning materials to or from their students. People can also undertake online courses which they can pursue at the comfort of their homes or offices.

Furthermore, people get entertained in various ways by the ever increasing number of entertainment sites. There are sites that are purposely created to offer recreation to Internet users such as youtube.com which is used by entertainers or even ordinary people to post music, movies or funny comedies and events which are then accessed by people, hence entertaining them.

There are also social networks that are developed in the Internet which are used by people to interact by communicating, sharing photos and finding friends all over the world. Such sites include Facebook and Twitter.

Therefore, from the above benefits, it can be articulated that the invention of the Internet has really changed the lives of many people. Internet has also altered the mode in which various activities are done. It has also led to the development of so many other things related to the technology and at the same time things that seem to be inaccessible to easily reached. In essence, this invention has really affected people’s lives positively.

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IvyPanda. (2018, September 4). What Are the Benefits of the Internet? https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-internet/

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IvyPanda . 2018. "What Are the Benefits of the Internet?" September 4, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-internet/.

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Essay on Importance of Internet: Samples for Students

• Updated on  
• Nov 23, 2023

Internet is not just a need or luxury, it has become a household necessity. It was used as a source of entertainment but now it is impossible to work in offices or study without the Internet. When the global pandemic locked everyone in their house, it became an important medium to connect, study and work. Students were able to study without the risk of catching COVID-19 because of the Internet. The importance of the internet is also a common topic in various entrance exams such as SAT , TOEFL , and UPSC . In this blog, you will learn how to write an essay on the importance of the Internet.

This Blog Includes:

Tips to write the perfect essay on internet, sample 1 of essay on the importance of the internet (100 words), sample essay 2 – importance of the internet (150 words), sample essay 3 on use of internet for student (300 words).

Also Read: LNAT Sample Essays

Now the task of essay writing may not always be easy, hence candidates must always know a few tips to write the perfect essay. Mentioned below are a few tips for writing the correct essay:

• Prepare a basic outline to make sure there is continuity and relevance and no break in the structure of the essay
• Follow a given structure. Begin with an introduction then move on to the body which should be detailed and encapsulate the essence of the topic and finally the conclusion for readers to be able to comprehend the essay in a certain manner
• Students can also try to include solutions in their conclusion to make the essay insightful and lucrative to read.

Also Read: UPSC Essay Topics

The last few years have witnessed heavy reliance on the Internet. This has been because of multiple advantages that it has to offer – for instance, reducing work stress and changing the face of communication most importantly. If we take the current scenario, we cannot ignore how important the Internet is in our everyday lives. It is now indeed a challenging task to visualize a world without the internet. One may define the internet as a large library composed of stuff like – records, pictures, websites, and pieces of information. Another sector in which the internet has an undeniably important role to play is the field of communication. Without access to the internet, the ability to share thoughts and ideas across the globe would have also been just a dream. 

Also Read: IELTS Essay Topics

With the significant progress in technology, the importance of the internet has only multiplied with time. The dependence on the internet has been because of multiple advantages that it has to offer – for instance, reducing work stress and changing the face of communication most importantly. By employing the correct usage of the internet, we can find various information about the world. The internet hosts Wikipedia, which is considered to be one of the largest best-composed reference books kept up by a vast community of volunteer scholars and editors from all over the world. Through the internet, one may get answers to all their curiosity.

In the education sector too, it plays a major role, especially taking into consideration the pandemic. The Internet during the pandemic provided an easy alternative to replace the traditional education system and offers additional resources for studying, students can take their classes in the comforts of their homes. Through the internet, they can also browse for classes – lectures at no extra cost. The presence of the Internet is slowly replacing the use of traditional newspapers. It offers various recreational advantages as well. It can be correctly said that the internet plays a great role in the enhancement of quality of life.

Also Read: TOEFL Sample Essays

One may correctly define the 21st century as the age of science and technology. However, this has been possible not only by the efforts of the current generation but also by the previous generation. The result of one such advancement in the field of science and technology is the Internet. What is the Internet? So the internet can be called a connected group of networks that enable electronic communication. It is considered to be the world’s largest communication connecting millions of users.

The dependence on the internet has been because of multiple advantages that it has to offer – for instance, reducing work stress and changing the face of communication most importantly. Given the current scenario, the Internet has become a massive part of our daily lives, and it is now a challenging task to imagine the world without the Internet. The importance of the Internet in the field of communication definitely cannot be ignored.

Without access to the internet, the ability to share thoughts and ideas across the globe would have been just a dream. Today we can talk to people all over the globe only because of services like email, messenger, etc that are heavily reliant on the internet. Without the internet, it would be hard to imagine how large the world would be. The advent of the internet has made the task of building global friendships very easy.

The youth is mainly attracted by entertainment services. Streaming platforms like Amazon , Netflix, and YouTube have also gained immense popularity among internet users over the past few years. The presence of the Internet is slowly replacing the use of traditional newspapers among people too. 

In addition to these, it has various recreational advantages to offer as well. For instance, people can search for fun videos to watch and play games online with friends and other people all over the globe. Hence, we can say the internet holds immense importance in today’s era. Internet technology has indeed changed the dynamics of how we communicate, respond or entertain ourselves. Its importance in everyday life is never-ending. It can be correctly said that the internet plays a great role in the enhancement of quality of life. In the future too, we will see further changes in technology .

Also Read: SAT to Drop Optional Essays and Subject Tests from the Exam

Related Articles

The internet provides us with facts and data, as well as information and knowledge, to aid in our personal, social, and economic development. The internet has various applications; nevertheless, how we utilize it in our daily lives is determined by our particular needs and ambitions.

Here are five uses of the internet: email; sharing of files; watching movies and listening to songs; research purposes; and education.

The Internet has also altered our interactions with our families, friends, and life partners. Everyone is now connected to everyone else in a more simplified, accessible, and immediate manner; we can conduct part of our personal relationships using our laptops, smartphones, and tablets.

This was all about an essay on importance of Internet. The skill of writing an essay comes in handy when appearing for standardized language tests. Thinking of taking one soon? Leverage Live provides the best online test prep for the same. Register today to know more!

Nikita Puri

Nikita is a creative writer and editor, who is always ready to learn new skills. She has great knowledge about study abroad universities, researching and writing blogs about them. Being a perfectionist, she has a habit of keeping her tasks complete on time before the OCD hits her. When Nikita is not busy working, you can find her eating while binge-watching The office. Also, she breathes music. She has done her bachelor's from Delhi University and her master's from Jamia Millia Islamia.

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• U.S. Public Wary of Biomedical Technologies to ‘Enhance’ Human Abilities
• 6. Public sees science and technology as net positives for society

Table of Contents

• 1. Understanding patterns in Americans’ reactions to gene editing, brain chip implants and synthetic blood transfusions that push boundaries of the human condition
• 2. U.S. public opinion on the future use of gene editing
• 3. Public opinion on the future use of brain implants
• 4. The public’s views on the future use of synthetic blood substitutes
• 5. From plastic surgery to vasectomies: Public opinion on current human enhancement options
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology

The possibilities for human enhancement stem from new scientific and technological innovations. And even though many Americans have reservations about the potential use of cutting-edge biomedical developments considered in earlier chapters, large shares say they think of science and technology, writ large, as mostly beneficial forces in American society.

Two-thirds of U.S. adults (67%) say science has had mostly positive effects on society, while 27% say there have been roughly equal positive and negative effects and just 4% say the effects have been largely negative. This finding is in line with a 2014 Pew Research Center study and others showing generally positive views about the effect of science on society.

Overall, views about the effects of technology are also largely positive, if a bit less so in comparison with science. About half of adults (52%) say technology has had mostly positive effects, compared with 38% who say there have been an equal mix of positive and negative effects of technology. Just 8% say technology has had mostly negative effects.

Many Americans see science as having positive effects from health and medicine

The survey asked an open-ended question to give respondents a chance to explain, in their own words, why they feel the way they do about science’s effect on society. Some 67% of Americans say science has had a mostly positive effect on society; the most common reasons cited are related to medicine and health (59% of this group), including improvements in medical research, quality and longevity of life, and treatment of disease.

Other ways science is seen to benefit society include overall knowledge and reasoning skills (19%), technology improvements (15%) and environmental benefits and awareness about environmental issues (14%).

Just 4% of adults say the effect of science has been primarily negative. This group of 60 survey respondents is not large enough to analyze separately.

Technology seen as positive, especially for quickly and easily sharing information

Overall, 52% of U.S. adults say the effect of technology has been largely positive. Within this group, 57% cite the vast network of information and communication that is available, easily accessed and shared across the world as a benefit for society. Another 21% see improvements to health, medicine and medical research as benefits of technology.

Other ways technology is seen to have a positive effect on society include increased knowledge and understanding, improvements in industry and jobs and an interconnectedness of the world as a result of globalization.

Just 8% of Americans say technology has mostly had negative effects on society. The leading reason for this perspective is the feeling that technology has led to a breakdown of communication and human interaction (41% of this group). Another 28% say technology has degraded society’s morals and values, leading to a reliance on instant gratification and promoting negativity. Others complain that technology has led to an inability to handle normal tasks (20%) or to the misuse of widely available information (16%).

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Does the Internet Bring People Closer Together or Further Apart? The Impact of Internet Usage on Interpersonal Communications

1 Business School, Shandong University, Weihai 264209, China

Guangjie Ning

2 HSBC Business School, Peking University, Shenzhen 518055, China

Qianqian Liu

Associated data.

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS, http://cgss.ruc.edu.cn/English/Home.htm (accessed on 25 September 2022). Restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for this study. Data are also available from the authors with the permission of the CGSS.

The complementarity interference (CI) model suggests that the Internet may either inhibit or facilitate interpersonal communications. This paper empirically examines the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal interactions, using a micro dataset from China to answer whether the Internet brings people closer together or further apart. The empirical results demonstrate, first, that Internet usage significantly increases both the time and frequency of people’s communications with their family and friends, rather than causing them to feel more disconnected and isolated. Holding other factors constant, for each one-standard-deviation increase in Internet usage, weekly communications with family members increases by an average of 102.150 min, while there is an average increase of 54.838 min in interactions with friends. These findings as to its positive effects are robust when using other regression models and interpersonal contact measures, as well as the instrumental variable method. Second, Internet usage also contributes to decreased loneliness; it exerts this effect primarily by improving people’s interactions with their family members. However, communications with friends do not significantly mediate such impacts. Third, the positive role of Internet usage on communications is more prominent for people with more frequent online socialization and self-presentation, better online skills, younger age, higher educational level, and who are living in urban areas. In addition, the beneficial effects of Internet usage are larger for communications with family members in the case of migrants. Therefore, in the context of the rapid development of information technology, the network infrastructure should be improved to make better use of the Internet to facilitate interpersonal communications and promote people’s wellness.

1. Introduction

Whether Internet usage brings people closer together or further apart is an important but unanswered question. With the rapid development of information technology, the Internet has been widely used in various areas almost all over the world. According to Internet World Stats, compared with the year 2000, the number of global Internet users in 2022 has increased by 14.16 times. By 31 July 2022, there were 5.47 billion Internet users in the world out of the 7.93 billion global population, and the penetration rate has steadily risen to 68.98% [ 1 ]. The rapid taking up of the Internet has profoundly changed human society in multiple aspects. On the macro level, it has reduced transaction costs, promoted industrial upgrading [ 2 , 3 ], and driven economic development [ 4 , 5 ]. On the micro level, the Internet has tremendous impacts on people’s daily lives and has changed their lifestyles, habits, attitudes and preferences [ 6 , 7 , 8 ]. However, the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal communications is still unclear. The complementarity interference (CI) model suggests that the Internet may either inhibit or facilitate interpersonal interactions.

On the one hand, in terms of the interference aspects, there may be a crowding-out effect of Internet usage on interpersonal contacts. Using the Internet may divert people’s attention from communicating with family and friends to other activities, such as playing online games, surfing websites, watching online videos, and live streaming. This may lead people to ignore real-life communications [ 9 , 10 , 11 ]. In addition, excessive addiction to the Internet can also trigger people’s depression, anxiety, and emotional impulsivity, resulting in a poor psychological state and even social phobias [ 12 , 13 ]. This may also cause people to reduce their interpersonal interactions. Based on this finding, it has been hypothesized that the more time spent on the Internet, the fewer interpersonal communications there will be.

On the other hand, in terms of complementarity, the Internet may facilitate interpersonal communications by reducing communication costs and providing opportunities for teleconferencing. Before the popularization of modern information technologies, people could only communicate by meeting face to face. Later, the development of communication technologies, such as the telegraph and telephone, eliminated the geographical boundaries of interpersonal contacts and made remote communication a reality. However, traditional communication technologies can only transmit information via voice and text messages and have the drawback of high cost. The Internet has greatly reduced the cost of communications, shortened the distances between disparate groups, and has even made it possible for people to meet via video conferencing [ 14 ]. In addition, Internet technologies have brought a variety of emerging communication platforms, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Zoom, and WeChat, helping people to communicate more conveniently at a much lower cost [ 15 , 16 , 17 ]. On the basis of this evolution, it is hypothesized that the more time people spend on the Internet, the more interpersonal communications there are.

Interpersonal communications are essential to building social networks, which is also a necessary channel to help people establish social trust and enhance their sense of belonging and happiness [ 18 , 19 , 20 ]. Therefore, in the context of the rapid development of Internet technology, it is of great importance to clarify the impact of the Internet on interpersonal communications. If Internet usage can facilitate interpersonal interactions at a lower cost and in a more convenient way, then we should make full use of this technology to promote communications. Conversely, if the Internet reduces interpersonal communications, then necessary measures should be taken to alleviate its negative effects on interpersonal interactions while utilizing the benefits of the Internet in other aspects. Therefore, this paper aims to empirically examine the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal communications, using the Chinese General Social Survey. The robustness and endogeneity of the results are also tested from multiple perspectives. On this basis, we further explore the impact of Internet usage on people’s feelings of loneliness and the mediating role of interpersonal communications. In addition, the heterogeneities of the Internet’s effects are systematically investigated.

Compared with the existing literature, the contributions of this paper are mainly reflected in two aspects. First, this paper enriches the research concerning the Internet’s impacts on people. Most of the existing literature examines the influence of the Internet from the points of view of working conditions, psychological states, emotions, health, preferences, and lifestyles [ 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 ], while little research has been conducted concerning its effect on interpersonal communications. Second, this paper deepens our understanding of the influencing factors of interpersonal interactions, from the new perspective of modern information technology. Existing studies in the field of social communications have mainly focused on the effects of demographic characteristics, social identities, culture, and so on [ 25 , 26 , 27 ], lacking any assessment of the impact of the Internet.

This paper aims to examine the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal communications, as well as to investigate the heterogeneities in its effect, to systematically answer whether the Internet brings people closer together or pushes them further apart. This study is carried out following the research logic of “literature review—theoretical framework—empirical tests—further discussion—heterogeneity analysis”. A systematic literature review is given in Section 2 . Based on the literature, a theoretical framework using the complementarity interference (CI) model is presented in Section 3 , wherein the hypotheses are proposed. To test the theory, the data, variables, and empirical results are presented in Section 4 and Section 5 . Section 6 further discusses the impact of Internet usage on loneliness and the mediating role of interpersonal communications, as well as the Internet’s effects in other respects. Section 7 explores the heterogeneities of the impact of Internet usage. Section 8 summarizes all the conclusions drawn in the above sections, Section 9 identifies the theoretical and practical implications, and Section 10 discusses the study’s limitations and further research directions.

2. Literature Review

2.1. the impact of internet usage on people’s lives.

With the advancement of information technology, the Internet has become more and more indispensable in people’s daily lives. The Internet has brought tremendous positive impacts in multiple aspects. For example, Internet-based telecommuting is becoming a convenient and increasingly popular mode of work around the world [ 28 ]. Moreover, studies have found that self-presentation on social media helps users to achieve higher psychological well-being [ 29 ]. Heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that the positive impact of self-presentation on social media on psychological well-being is more significant in those with higher self-esteem [ 30 ]. Through online comparisons, people are able to generate benign envy, which is helpful for inspiration [ 22 , 31 ].

However, it has also been found that the Internet has mixed and heterogeneous impacts on its users. For example, while for girls, daily Internet use was not associated with higher levels of depressive symptoms [ 32 ], for boys, a positive association between the two factors did exist [ 33 ]. Interestingly, a study based on a Chinese sample found a significantly positive association between Internet use and mental health [ 34 ]. Many studies have also identified jealousy as one of the main symptoms of poorer states of mental health resulting from Internet use [ 35 , 36 , 37 ]. In addition to psychological health, existing studies find a significant negative association between mobile Internet use and self-rated health [ 34 ]. Moreover, online games are one of the most significant applications of the Internet and their impacts are controversial. It is found that frequent exposure to violent online games tends to be associated with an increase in aggressive behavior, desensitization, and physiological arousal, while also showing a decrease in empathy [ 38 ]. However, other studies have found that the correlation between online games and aggressive behaviors is not significant [ 23 , 24 ]. In addition, practical games are widely used in multiple areas of education, healthcare, sustainability projects, training, and consultancy, but their effectiveness varies due to differences in the designs [ 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 ].

Furthermore, Internet usage has also led to the emergence of Internet addiction, a new clinical disorder [ 44 ]. The COVID-19 pandemic has further increased people’s Internet online usage and a rising prevalence of Internet addiction has been reported among people in various occupations [ 45 , 46 ]. Although Internet addiction has not been recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Psychological Association (APA), existing studies have shown that it is a new type of serious mental disorder [ 47 ]. There are heterogeneities in the severity and prevalence of Internet addiction. Regionally, Internet addiction has a greater impact on Internet users in developed areas, such as in Europe and the United States [ 48 , 49 ]. Studies also found that those with greater neuroticism are more likely to become addicted to the Internet [ 50 , 51 ]. Heterogeneity also exists in terms of gender, age, and social class. For example, people with a higher social class are less likely to experience Internet addiction [ 49 , 52 ].

2.2. Factors Affecting Interpersonal Communications

Interpersonal communication is a complex social process and is closely related to people’s well-being. Evidence shows that those with a high level of communication skills have a better mental health status compared to their counterparts [ 53 , 54 ]. Other studies have found that higher interpersonal stress is associated with stronger symptoms of insomnia, which, in turn, is associated with poorer mental health status [ 55 , 56 ]. In addition to its important impact on the psychological well-being of individuals, interpersonal communication also plays an essential role in building strong family relationships [ 57 , 58 ]. The importance of interpersonal communication is also reflected in many other aspects, including improving learning ability, obtaining job opportunities, promoting career development, etc. [ 59 , 60 ].

Regarding the factors affecting interpersonal communications, studies have found that age, gender, culture, social background, working characteristics, geographical distance, and technology exert a level of influence [ 25 , 58 , 61 ], although there is disagreement about the exact impact of these factors. For example, ethnic background affects interpersonal communications to some extent, mainly because people with different backgrounds are more likely to experience cultural misunderstandings with each other [ 26 ]. It has already been mentioned above that interpersonal communication can influence mental health and physical activities. Likewise, the two factors also affect interpersonal interaction. A study using a sample of college students found that social anxiety had a negative impact on their interpersonal communication skills, while psychological resilience played a mediating role between them, and perceived social support from teachers and classmates further moderated their psychological resilience [ 62 ]. It was also found that physical activity can facilitate family communication among family members because it provides more opportunities for them to meet [ 27 , 63 ].

In general, existing studies demonstrate that interpersonal communications are of great importance in promoting people’s mental health and helping families to build resilience. At the same time, interpersonal communications are conducive to acquiring new knowledge and playing a better role in both the family and society. Moreover, demographic, work, human capital, and social characteristics are the main factors that influence interpersonal communication.

2.3. Possible Relationship between Internet Usage and Interpersonal Communication

As mentioned above, interpersonal communication plays an important role in people’s lives, work, and careers; nowadays, it can be achieved by face-to-face interactions as well as via the Internet. At the same time, the Internet has both pros and cons in many aspects. So how does the Internet impact interpersonal communications? Based on existing research, it is believed that frequent exposure to the Internet distracts users from their offline lives [ 64 ]. For example, the use of mobile Internet via smartphones distracts parents from spending time with their children and undermines the communication between parents and children [ 65 ]. Furthermore, another study shows that children’s Internet use is also associated with a decrease in their participation in family activities. When people are overly dependent on the Internet, online activities can replace offline social connections with their family members and friends [ 11 , 66 ]. Internet addiction has also been proven to lead to a reduction in people’s social and interpersonal skills [ 47 , 67 ], which may further reduce their communications with family and friends. Although the effect of Internet usage on interpersonal communications has not been directly studied, the aforementioned studies imply that time spent on the Internet may crowd out interpersonal interaction, to some extent.

However, other studies point to the possible positive effects of Internet usage on interpersonal communication. Thanks to the development of Internet technology, today, text messages and voice calls are no longer the main methods for people of all ages [ 15 , 16 ]. Social networking software and group chats have become popular communication platforms [ 27 , 68 ]. Many studies have found that the use of the Internet effectively brings much convenience to interpersonal connections for both the young and old cohorts [ 69 , 70 ], which in turn can benefit people’s well-being [ 71 ]. Indeed, compared with traditional communication methods, such as letters, telegraphs and phone calls, the Internet provides innovative means of communication, such as video meetings, in a more convenient and cost-saving way. For example, WhatsApp has been shown to facilitate intergenerational family interactions [ 17 ]. Facebook helps to maintain interpersonal relationships for those who have difficulty making social connections, especially for people with low self-esteem [ 72 ].

Overall, the Internet has changed people’s lives tremendously, although its effects on interpersonal communications have not been systematically tested. In this context, it can be hypothesized from the existing research that the Internet may crowd out interpersonal communications [ 47 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 ]. Nevertheless, many studies believe that the Internet reduces the cost of communication between people, offering more diverse and convenient ways to make contact [ 15 , 16 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 ]. Therefore, it can also be speculated that the Internet may shorten the distances between people, thereby promoting interpersonal communication. However, even with theoretical analysis and the existing literature, the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal interactions is still unclear. In view of this gap in the literature, we aim to systematically investigate how the Internet affects interpersonal communication.

3. Theoretical Framework

3.1. internet usage.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal communication. For the explanatory variable, time spent on the Internet is the most direct and important indicator by which to measure Internet usage; it is very intuitive and is widely used [ 11 , 67 , 73 ]. In addition, it has been applied not only to characterize how people generally use the Internet in their daily life but also to measure possible excessive Internet use and Internet addiction [ 74 ].

3.2. Interpersonal Communications

Studies have shown that communications with family members and friends are most important in people’s daily interpersonal interactions [ 75 , 76 , 77 ]. In the benchmarking analysis, time spent on communications with family and friends is used to reflect interpersonal interactions. Meanwhile, considering that the frequency of interactions is also a very important indicator for interpersonal contact, this is used for further robustness analysis. Both kinds of indicators have been applied to measure the levels of interpersonal contact in existing research [ 78 , 79 , 80 , 81 ].

The complementarity interference (CI) model [ 53 , 82 ] of the Internet, as illustrated in Figure 1 , provides a theoretical framework for analyzing the relationship between Internet usage and interpersonal communication. Based on the following theoretical analysis, Internet usage may either facilitate or deteriorate interpersonal communication.

The theoretical framework of the study.

3.3. Interference Aspects of Internet Usage

3.3.1. distracting attention.

Studies have confirmed a significantly negative correlation between online and offline activities [ 83 ]. The Internet may divert people’s attention away from interpersonal interactions to online activities, including video games, online news, short videos, live streaming, etc., leading users to neglect communications with family and friends in real life [ 10 , 66 ]. This suggests that Internet usage may shift people’s attention; there may be a crowding-out effect of Internet usage on interpersonal communication. In addition, research has also found a negative correlation between Internet usage and time spent accompanying family members [ 11 ]. Although they do not specifically examine how the Internet affects family communications, the findings imply that time spent online may reduce interpersonal interactions inside the family, to some extent. In addition, in parent–child contact, the parent’s attention is easily distracted by online activities via smartphones, resulting in compromised parent-child bonds [ 65 ].

3.3.2. Reducing Social Skills

It has been shown that people tend to establish fewer offline social networks when they are overly dependent on the Internet [ 68 ]. This may be due to the fact that Internet usage reduces people’s social and interpersonal skills [ 67 ], thereby decreasing their communications and interactions. Studies have also found that among adolescents with a higher prevalence of Internet addiction, social skills are generally poorer [ 47 ]. Moreover, Internet addiction is proven to be closely related to attention deficit disorders, further causing social phobia [ 84 ]. Another study has identified that inadequate social skills and social fears decrease interpersonal communication [ 85 ]. Consequently, Internet use may hinder interpersonal interactions by reducing people’s social skills.

3.3.3. Increasing Negative Emotions

Internet usage may trigger depression, anxiety, and impulsiveness in some people, resulting in poor psychological states and negative emotions [ 10 ]. This may also further lead to a decrease in interpersonal interactions [ 11 , 73 ]. In addition, compared with face-to-face communications, Internet-based interpersonal interactions are disadvantaged in terms of emotional transmission and are, thus, less effective in enhancing effective communication [ 53 , 83 ]. Another source of negative feelings brought about by the Internet is peer pressure. Nowadays, people tend to share their daily lives via online platforms, inadvertently causing them to make comparisons with the lives of others. This makes people more pessimistic about their body image and standard of living, resulting in increased anxiety [ 86 ]. The nervousness caused by peer pressure on the Internet leads users to be more reluctant to communicate with others in the real world.

Based on the interference aspects of Internet usage, Hypothesis 1 can be proposed:

The more hours people use the Internet, the less time they spend on interpersonal communications.

3.4. Complementarity Aspects of Internet Usage

3.4.1. reducing the cost of interpersonal communications.

Before the popularization of modern information technologies, people could only communicate face-to-face. Later, the telegraph and telephone eliminated the geographical boundaries of interpersonal contact and made remote communication a reality [ 87 ]. However, traditional communication techniques face the problem of high costs. The Internet has greatly reduced both the time and money needed for instant communication, narrowed the distances between people, and made simultaneous communication affordable. For example, compared with telephone calls, Internet-based voice calls and online meetings cost much less in time and money for people to communicate [ 14 , 88 ].

3.4.2. Enriching Communication Channels and Modes

Traditional communication technologies mainly transmit voice and text, but it is difficult for them to simulate face-to-face interactions. The Internet has spawned a variety of emerging communication channels and modes, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Zoom, and WeChat, which can help people to replicate face-to-face interactions more realistically online [ 15 , 16 ]. For example, during the COVID-19 epidemic, various network platforms facilitated remote working and learning [ 89 ]. Without the Internet, this would have been almost unachievable. In addition, Internet-based communications help to improve the quality of people’s long-distance interactions compared to traditional methods. For example, it has been established that WhatsApp, an instant online messaging tool, can promote intergenerational communication among family members and help them build better bridges of understanding with each other [ 17 ].

3.4.3. Building Wider Social Networks

The Internet helps people overcome communication barriers in real life, especially the fear of communicating with strangers, thereby establishing broader social networks [ 90 ]. Studies have found that Internet-based social networking platforms are effective in helping people share updates and, thus, build wider social connections across age, race, gender, geography, and social class boundaries [ 70 ]. Moreover, these enlarged social networks also create positive spillover effects in other aspects, improving people’s welfare. For example, people can use social media to communicate with others on health topics, which helps them become more health-conscious and intrinsically motivated to participate in physical exercises [ 69 ]. Therefore, online social connections contribute to improving people’s well-being, as well as promoting interpersonal communication and interactions [ 71 , 91 ].

Based on the complementarity aspects of Internet usage, Hypothesis 2 can be proposed:

The more hours people use the Internet, the more time they spend on interpersonal communications.

4. Data and Measures

4.1. data source.

The data used in this paper come from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS), one of the most important and nationally representative academic surveys in China. The CGSS aims to systematically and comprehensively investigate the social and economic situations of the Chinese people. CGSS is part of the world General Social Survey group and the sampling of CGSS is based on a multi-stage stratified design. The National Survey Research Center at the Renmin University of China (NSRC) has organized the Chinese Social Survey Network (CSSN), including 49 universities and provincial social science academies. Detailed information regarding CGSS can be accessed via http://cgss.ruc.edu.cn/English/Home.htm (accessed on 25 September 2022). The reason for using CGSS is mainly due to its three advantages. First, CGSS surveys people’s interpersonal communication and the factors influencing it in the extension module, which is a convenient way to construct the explained variables and control variables. Second, CGSS contains information on the respondents’ habits of Internet usage, which facilitates the construction of an explanatory variable for this research. Third, CGSS contains the ISCO-2008 (International Standard Classification of Occupations, 2008) codes of the respondents’ occupations, which helps us construct an instrumental variable, based on job characteristics, to deal with the endogeneity problem. Since the key explained and explanatory variables used in this paper are only available in the extension module of CGSS in 2017, the 2017-wave dataset is used for this research.

4.2. Measures

The main explained variable in this paper is the time spent on interpersonal communication by the respondents. Communication with family members and friends is most important in people’s daily interactions [ 75 , 76 ]; therefore, we constructed indicators for communications with family and friends, denoted as “family communication” and “friends communication”, respectively. The two variables come from the following questions in CGSS’s extension module, “How many hours do you spend on communicating with your family per week on average?” and “How many hours do you spend on communicating with your friends per week on average?”, respectively. In the robustness analysis, other indicators of interpersonal communications were also constructed. The explanatory variable of this paper is the time spent using the Internet, denoted as “Internet usage”. This variable is derived from the respondents’ answers to the question: “How many hours do you use the Internet per week on average?”.

Based on the relevant literature concerning the factors influencing interpersonal communications [ 61 , 62 ], in order to avoid the bias of omitted variables, this paper controls those factors related to interpersonal communications as comprehensively as possible in the following six aspects. (1) Basic demographic characteristics, including gender, age and the squared term of age. (2) Working characteristics, including personal income, whether the participant is working in the system and whether they have a pension and medical insurance. (3) Human capital characteristics, including educational level and health status. (4) Social characteristics, including whether the participant belongs to any ethnic minorities, have certain religious beliefs, or if they are a Communist Party of China (CPC) member. (5) Family characteristics include family size and the number of children. (6) Regional characteristics include provincial dummies. Detailed descriptions and statistics of the above variables are given in Table 1 .

Summary statistics.

Notes: The education level is classified from 1 to 13: 1—without any education, 2—kindergarten, 3—primary school, 4—junior high school, 5—vocational high school, 6—ordinary high school, 7—technical secondary school, 8—technical high school, 9—junior college (adult education), 10—junior college (regular education), 11—undergraduate (adult education), 12—undergraduate (regular education), 13—postgraduate and above. Health status is based on the self-rated health levels from 1 to 5: 1—very unhealthy, 2—relatively unhealthy, 3—medium, 4—relatively healthy, 5—very healthy.

5.1. Benchmark Results

To investigate the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal communications, this paper first constructs the following ordinary least squares (OLS) benchmark econometric model.

In model (1), I n t e r p e r s o n a l _ c o m m u n i c a t i o n i and I n t e r n e t _ u s a g e i represent the time spent on interpersonal communications and Internet usage, respectively, by the respondent, i . The time spent on communicating with family and friends is used to characterize I n t e r p e r s o n a l _ c o m m u n i c a t i o n i . x i ′ is the vector of the series of control variables described above. d p is the provincial fixed effect. This paper estimates the relationship between interpersonal communications and Internet usage with this model.

Table 2 shows the regression results, based on the above OLS model. Columns (1)–(3) demonstrate the results of the estimations concerning communicating with family members and columns (4)–(6) are estimated results concerning communicating with friends. It is clear that Internet usage is significantly and positively related to the time spent on communications with both family members and friends. Here, we conduct regression analysis by sequentially including the controls of different characteristics, with the aim of exploring whether the relationship between Internet usage and interpersonal communications is affected by other factors. Table 1 shows that, by gradually adding control variables from different aspects, the estimated coefficients of Internet use are stable at around 0.095 and 0.051 for the two explained variables, respectively. Moreover, all the estimates are significantly positive at the 1% level. This suggests that the more time people spend on the Internet, the more time they spend interacting with family and friends, supporting Hypothesis 2. It also means that the significant correlation between Internet usage and interpersonal interactions is not affected by other factors and is very robust. The above results prove that Internet usage does not lead to greater alienation among people. On the contrary, the Internet significantly enhances interpersonal communications.

Benchmark results.

Notes: ***, **, and * indicate significance at the levels of 1%, 5%, and 10%, respectively. The values in parentheses are standard errors robust to heteroskedasticity. ‘Yes’ means the corresponding variables are controlled in the regression, while ‘No’ means they are not controlled.

In addition, the benchmark estimates also show that the effect of the Internet on interpersonal interactions is very notable. Holding other factors constant, for each one-standard-deviation increase in Internet usage (17.921 h per week), the weekly communication with family members increases by an average of 102.150 min (17.921 × 0.095 × 60), while there is an average increase of 54.838 min in interactions with friends. This demonstrates that while Internet usage has significantly positive effects on communications with both family and friends, it plays a more prominent role in facilitating interactions among family members.

5.2. Robustness and Endogeneity Checks

In order to examine the robustness of the relationship between Internet usage and interpersonal communications, and to tackle potential endogeneity problems, this paper conducts a series of robustness and endogeneity checks.

5.2.1. Using the Poisson Model

Considering the fact that the dependent variables, which represent the time spent on communicating with family and friends, are discrete non-negative integers and fit the Poisson distribution, we use the Poisson model to conduct the robustness test. Table 3 shows that when using the Poisson model for communications with both family and friends, the estimated coefficients of Internet usage are all significantly positive at the 1% level. In addition, with the controlling characteristics as different aspects, the estimated coefficients of Internet usage fluctuate slightly but are generally very stable. This further confirms that our findings regarding Internet usage promoting people’s interpersonal communications do not rely on the selection of the OLS model.

Robustness checks using the Poisson model.

Notes: *** indicate significance at the levels of 1%, respectively. The values in parentheses are standard errors robust to heteroskedasticity. ‘Yes’ means the corresponding variables are controlled in the regression, while ‘No’ means they are not controlled.

5.2.2. Using Other Indicators of Interpersonal Communication

In benchmark regression, we use the time spent on communications with family and friends to characterize interpersonal interaction. However, there may be measurement errors in some people’s perceptions of time. Furthermore, communication time may not adequately characterize the frequency of interpersonal communications. Based on this theory, to test the robustness of the findings, this paper further uses the frequencies of communication with family and friends as dependent variables, denoted as “Family communication frequency” and “Friends communication frequency”. These are derived from the respondents’ responses to “How often do you keep in touch with your family, on average?” and “How often do you keep in touch with your friends, on average?”. Answers are classified based on an eight-level scale from 1 to 8, representing “never”, “rarely”, “several times a year”, “once a month”, “2–3 times a month”, “once a week”, “several times a week”, and “every day”, respectively. Since they are ordered and explained variables for which the disparities between different levels of the scale are not equivalent, ordered Probit (Oprobit) and Logit (Ologit) models, as well as the OLS model, are used for estimation. The regression results are shown in Table 4 . It is clear that when using these kinds of dependent variables to measure interpersonal communications, and no matter which model is applied, Internet usage has a significantly positive effect on the frequency of people’s interactions with family and friends, which further confirms the robustness of the findings.

Robustness checks, using other indicators of interpersonal communications.

5.2.3. Endogeneity Tests

There may be endogeneity problems in the benchmark estimates, therefore, the significant relationship between Internet usage and interpersonal communications may be a correlation rather than causality. The endogeneity problems may result from two aspects, comprising reverse causality and omitted variable bias. Regarding reverse causality, we suggest that people may use the Internet more frequently because they are more willing to communicate with family members and friends. For example, individuals who live alone, who frequently travel and migrate, may use the Internet because of the need to communicate remotely with their friends and family. With respect to omitted variable bias, although we have controlled as comprehensively as possible those elements that affect interpersonal communications, there may still be factors that are difficult to characterize. In order to examine the causal relationship between Internet usage and interpersonal interactions and to tackle potential endogeneity problems, the following instrumental variable models are applied for carrying out further checks.

A I i is the instrumental variable, which is the degree of artificial intelligence’s application in an individual, i ’s, work. Model (2) performs first-stage regression, using A I i to estimate I n t e r n e t _ u s a g e i . In model (3), second-stage regression is conducted to examine the effect of Internet usage on interpersonal communications, using the predicted values in the first-stage estimation. The A I i indicator comes from Mihaylov and Tijden [ 92 ]. Existing studies have shown that the higher the application of artificial intelligence in their work, the higher the requirements for people’s skills in using the Internet [ 93 ], and thus, the more likely they are to show increased Internet usage. Therefore, the instrumental variable satisfies the correlation requirement. In addition, since artificial intelligence is an exogenous technological change and is, thus, not related to micro individual characteristics, this variable satisfies the exogeneity condition. As shown in Table 5 , results of the instrumental variable method with the two-stage least square (2SLS) method robustly prove that Internet usage has significantly positive impacts on interactions with family members and friends. This means that the significant relationship between Internet usage and interpersonal communications is causal rather than being a simple correlation.

Endogeneity tests: impacts on communications using an instrumental variable.

Notes: *** and ** indicate significance at the levels of 1% and 5%, respectively. The values in parentheses are standard errors robust to heteroskedasticity. ‘Yes’ means the corresponding variables are controlled in the regression, while ‘No’ means they are not controlled.

5.2.4. Missing Data Imputation

There are missing data in this research, with a missing rate of (3740−3507)/3740 = 6.223%. Although it seems that the missing rate is not high, missing data may cause sample selection problems, leading to biased and inconsistent statistical results, because the information may be missing but not at random. Considering that the dataset is cross-sectional rather than longitudinal and when referring to Ibrahim and Molenberghs [ 94 ], Kropko et al. [ 95 ], and Baraldi and Enders [ 96 ], we further tested whether the findings of this paper could be affected by the missing data problem, applying the following widely accepted approach. Specifically, we replace the missing values with the mean of the remaining values. Results using this approach are shown in Table 6 and it is clear that they are consistent with the benchmark estimations in this paper.

Replacing the missing values with the mean of the remaining values (OLS model).

6. Further Discussions

6.1. effects of internet usage on loneliness.

It has been confirmed in the sections above that Internet usage facilitates communications with family and friends. Furthermore, studies have shown that interpersonal communications are beneficial to increasing social support and reducing people’s loneliness [ 97 , 98 , 99 ]. Therefore, we are interested in whether Internet usage helps to reduce loneliness by increasing people’s interpersonal contacts. To test this hypothesis, we use an indicator to characterize loneliness, denoted as “Lonely”. It is taken from respondents’ answers to the question “I feel lonely”, which is based on the Likert scale from 1–5, representing “never”, “seldom”, “sometimes”, “often”, and “frequently”. The larger the values of the two variables, the higher the level of loneliness.

The first columns in Table 7 demonstrate the effect of Internet usage on loneliness, wherein the estimated coefficients of Internet usage are all significantly negative. This indicates that Internet usage significantly reduces loneliness. Meanwhile, columns (2) and (4) in Table 7 are the regression results of the impacts of Internet usage on communication with family members and friends, which are consistent with those in Table 3 . Columns (3) and (5) present the results for when the indicators of family communication and friends communication are further included in regressions. The estimated results in column (3) of Table 7 show that communication with friends does not significantly affect people’s loneliness. However, in column (5), the estimates of family communication are significantly negative at the 1% level, implying that interactions with family help to decrease loneliness. At the same time, after the mediating variables, interpersonal communications are included in the regression, where the estimated coefficients of Internet usage remain significantly negative. Additionally, in column (5) of Table 7 , the absolute values of the Internet usage estimates decrease, further proving that communication with family members plays a mediating role between using the Internet and loneliness. This implies that Internet usage reduces the feeling of loneliness by facilitating communication among family members. Family members are particularly important for Chinese people and the Chinese culture; therefore, relationships among family members have a more prominent impact on personal feelings [ 100 ]. Thus, compared with communication with friends, contacts with family members mediate the impact of the Internet in reducing loneliness more significantly.

Further impacts on loneliness.

6.2. Effects of Internet Usage in the Other Aspects

The above analysis shows the positive impact of the Internet on interpersonal communications, but it is not correct to assume that this usage has only a positive dimension. Further analysis using CGSS data, as shown in column (1) of Table 8 , demonstrates that the more time people spend online, the easier it is to get addicted to the Internet, resulting in spending a longer time online than was planned. In addition, people who frequently use the Internet are more likely to feel anxious if they do not go online for a while (column (2) in Table 8 ). This is consistent with the existing studies, reporting that people tend to have difficulty controlling their time, and it is easier for them to become addicted to the Internet and the online world [ 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 ]. Furthermore, we find that going online reduces the amount of time people spend outdoors (column (3) in Table 8 ) and leads to more family complaints that they spend too much time online (column (4) in Table 8 ). Although we cannot directly verify the effect of Internet usage on face-to-face interpersonal communication, due to data availability, this is an indirect way to test whether Internet use reduces people’s face-to-face contact with the outside world and results in increased complaints from family members. Moreover, in terms of physical health, it was also found that more Internet usage also causes people to have worse eyesight (column (5) in Table 8 ), as well as neck and shoulder pain (column (6) in Table 8 ). The above analysis is based on six Likert 5-point scale variables from the responses to the question, “How do the following descriptions fit your situation?”: “I often spend more time online than I planned”, “If I don’t go online for a while, I will be anxious and restless”, “I spend less time outdoors because of using the Internet”, “My family complains that I spend too much time online”, “My eyesight has become worse because of using the Internet”, “I have neck and shoulder pain because of using the Internet”. Their responses are: “1—very untrue of me”, “2—untrue of me”, “3—neutral”, “4—true of me”, and “5—very true of me”.

Other effects of internet usage (overlong usage and anxiety).

7. Heterogeneity Analysis

This paper further examines the heterogeneities of the impact of Internet usage on communications in different subgroups. First, in terms of the purposes of Internet usage, it is naturally hypothesized that if people use the Internet mainly for working or entertainment, rather than for interpersonal contact, then Internet usage should have no significant effect on their communications with family members and friends. This hypothesis is tested as follows. Specifically, this research divides the sample into subgroups, with different degrees of online social interactions and different preferences for online self-presentation, based on whether respondents frequently use social networking sites (including email, QQ, WeChat, Skype, etc.) to communicate with others, and whether they often post their updates on the social platforms (including WeChat, Moments, Qzone, Weibo, etc.). The regression results of Table 9 show that the impacts of Internet usage on communication with family and friends are only significant among those who often use the Internet to socialize, confirming the above hypothesis. In addition, posting updates regarding life and work via Internet social platforms also brings more online contacts. Table 10 shows that for individuals with a greater online presence, the positive effect of Internet usage on interpersonal communications is more pronounced. This means that for people who are more socially connected to the Internet, online activities significantly promote their interpersonal contacts. The heterogeneity results in this aspect also demonstrate that online social contact facilitates communications with family and friends and further confirm the robustness of the findings of this paper.

Heterogeneity analysis, in terms of online contacts.

Heterogeneity analysis in terms of online posts.

Furthermore, considering that communications via the Internet require certain online skills, it is naturally hypothesized that for individuals with better Internet skills, Internet usage should be more conducive to improving their interpersonal communication. This paper conducts a heterogeneity test for this hypothesis. According to whether the respondents are able to communicate with others proficiently online (the corresponding question in the CGSS questionnaire is: “Do you know how to express your thoughts and proficiently communicate with others online?”), the following subsample analysis is performed. The estimated results in columns (1) and (2) of Table 11 show that in terms of communications with family members, the positive effects of Internet usage are greater and are only statistically significant for those with more online skills. Columns (3) and (4) of Table 11 demonstrate that in terms of communications with friends, the role of Internet usage is significant for the two subgroups, but the estimated coefficient is larger for individuals skilled in online communications. This confirms that the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal contacts is more pronounced for people with better online skills.

Heterogeneity analysis, in terms of Internet skills.

Notes: *** and * indicate significance at the levels of 1% and 10%, respectively. The values in parentheses are standard errors robust to heteroskedasticity. ‘Yes’ means the corresponding variables are controlled in the regression, while ‘No’ means they are not controlled.

Moreover, it has been shown in the existing literature that there are disparities in Internet usage and interpersonal communication among individuals of different ages and educational backgrounds [ 34 , 47 , 61 ]. Therefore, we further examine the heterogeneities of the impacts of Internet usage in the different subgroups, with different demographic characteristics. Table 12 shows that the impacts of Internet usage on communications with family and friends are significantly positive for both younger and older respondents. However, their effect is greater on the younger group under the age of 35, which may be due to the fact that young people are more inclined to use new online applications and are more skilled in Internet use. Therefore, the positive effect of Internet usage is more prominent in the younger cohort. The mean time of Internet usage for young individuals under 35 in CGSS is 23.59, which is much greater than that of their older counterparts, which is 7.56.

Heterogeneity analysis, in terms of age.

The results of the heterogeneity analysis in terms of education level are shown in Table 13 . It is demonstrated that regardless of whether the respondents have a bachelor’s degree or above, the positive effect of Internet usage on interpersonal communications is significant. However, the Internet’s impact is more pronounced for those with higher educational levels. This may be due to the fact that the more educated groups have greater opportunities to learn and master the skills of using the Internet. In the CGSS sample, the average time of Internet usage among people with higher educational levels is much higher than the lower educated respondents (25.03 > 9.70).

Heterogeneity analysis, in terms of education level.

In addition, in terms of regional heterogeneity, it is clear from Table 14 that the impact of Internet usage on communications with family and friends is more prominent for urban residents. Compared with their rural counterparts, urban residents are more familiar with the Internet in their work and daily life, due to faster technological development and better network infrastructure. Therefore, the descriptive statistics for the two subsamples show that the mean hours of Internet usage for residents in rural and urban areas are 16.29 and 8.64, respectively.

Heterogeneity analysis in terms of region.

In addition, the Internet can help people to break geographical restrictions and realize remote communication, consequently shortening the distances between each other [ 19 ]. Therefore, it is natural to hypothesize that the role of Internet usage in facilitating communication may be more prominent for migrants. The regression results of Table 15 show that Internet usage has significant effects on promoting interpersonal communications, for both migrants and non-migrants. In particular, columns (1) and (2) show that in terms of family communication, the impact of Internet usage on migrants is more prominent than on non-migrants. However, columns (3) and (4) do not show a similar pattern in terms of communicating with friends. This is logical, since blood relationships among family members do not change due to migration, while friends can be found wherever you live. Migration leads to people moving further away from their families, geographically; consequently, the role of Internet usage in enhancing communications with family members is more prominent for migrants.

Heterogeneity analysis in terms of migration.

8. Conclusions

This paper empirically examines the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal communications with data from the Chinese General Social Survey to answer whether the Internet brings people closer together or further apart. The empirical results demonstrate that first, Internet usage helps to significantly increase the time and frequency of communications with family and friends, rather than causing people to feel more disconnected and isolated. This positive effect is robust when using various regression models and interpersonal contact measures, as well as the instrumental variable method. Specifically, the positive effects of Internet usage in promoting people’s interpersonal communications do not rely on the selection of regression models and are robustly significant regarding both the time that people spend on interactions, as well as the frequency of daily contacts. Furthermore, the relationship between Internet usage and interpersonal communications is proven to be causal rather than being a simple correlation, using the instrumental variable approach.

Second, Internet usage contributes to decreased loneliness, and it exerts this effect primarily by improving people’s interactions with their family members. However, communications with friends do not significantly mediate such impacts. This implies that the Internet reduces the feeling of loneliness by facilitating communication among family members, who are much more important in the Chinese culture, and therefore relationships among family members have a more important impact on personal feelings.

Third, the positive role of Internet usage on communications is more prominent for people with more frequent online socialization and self-presentation, higher online skills, younger age, higher educational levels and living in urban areas. In addition, the beneficial effects of Internet usage are larger on communications with family members for migrants. The reason may be that the blood relationships among family members do not change due to migration, while friends can be found anywhere.

9. Theoretical and Practical Implications

9.1. theoretical implications.

This paper clarifies the net effect of Internet usage on interpersonal communications. Research has shown that Internet technology has tremendously enriched communication channels and modes [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 87 , 89 ]. Moreover, compared with traditional communication methods, such as phone calls and text messages, the Internet helps people to establish a much wider social network and achieve effective remote communication at a lower cost, as well as with greater efficiency [ 69 , 70 , 90 , 101 ]. Nevertheless, other studies reveal that Internet usage may distract people’s attention [ 10 , 11 , 65 , 66 , 83 ], reduce their social skills [ 47 , 67 , 68 , 84 , 85 ], and may even increase negative emotions [ 10 , 11 , 53 , 73 , 86 ]. The impact of Internet usage in this aspect would hinder interpersonal communications. No direct evidence is provided on how the Internet influences interpersonal communications. Therefore, according to theoretical analyses based on the existing literature, the net effect of Internet usage on interpersonal contacts is still unclear because of the coexistence of the complementarity and interference aspects. This research contributes to the literature by clarifying that the net effect of Internet usage on interpersonal communications is positive. The more that people use the Internet, the more they can interact with their family and friends. This positive effect is confirmed via various endogeneity and robustness checks. This paper shows that although the Internet may have both pros and cons, its overall impact is positive regarding interpersonal communication.

In addition, this paper further verifies the role of the Internet in reducing people’s loneliness, which is an important factor affecting well-being. Loneliness not only leads to depression but also reduces people’s life satisfaction and overall well-being [ 102 , 103 ]. Interpersonal interaction is an important element impacting loneliness [ 104 ]. Since Internet usage promotes communication, a natural question arises regarding whether it helps to decrease loneliness through this mechanism. If this speculation holds true, the robustness of the conclusions in this paper would be confirmed further. The existing research demonstrates that the Internet has enriched interpersonal communication channels [ 105 ]. Moreover, other studies reveal that interactions can help reduce loneliness, improve people’s well-being, and decrease depression [ 89 , 91 , 106 ]. In this paper, we present our findings that Internet usage lowers loneliness by promoting people’s communications with family and friends. Therefore, this study also contributes to the literature by elucidating the mechanisms underlying the well-being and emotional benefits of Internet use [ 107 ].

Furthermore, compared with previous studies supporting the positive effects of Internet usage [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 87 , 89 ], we also find heterogeneities in its impact from multiple perspectives. It is clear that not everyone gains equally from Internet use. The positive role of the Internet on interpersonal communication is more prominent for people with more frequent online socialization and wider self-presentation, better online skills, a younger age, higher educational levels, and who are living in urban areas. Some subgroups benefit more from Internet usage, while those who have been left behind in the digital age gain less. Heterogeneity analysis enriches the literature on the impact of the Internet, helping us to better identify vulnerable groups in the Internet era and create effective public policies accordingly.

9.2. Practical Implications

With the rapid progress of online technology, traditional face-to-face communication is gradually shifting toward social networking via the Internet as people are becoming immersed in the digital age. The Internet not only drives economic development but also helps people to interact with each other at a lower cost and in a more convenient way. The policy implications of this paper include the following recommendations.

First, the network infrastructure should be improved and updated to make better use of the Internet, to facilitate interpersonal communication among people. In the fast-changing world of information, the Internet has provided people with more and more convenient communication channels. We should continue to make better use of more advanced Internet technologies and improve the quality of the network, in order to enhance people’s online experience. Emerging technologies, such as 5G, should be applied to help people obtain more convenient and cheaper access to the Internet to improve their interpersonal communication and enhance social welfare.

Second, this paper reports that the Internet promotes interpersonal contact, thereby weakening people’s sense of loneliness. Therefore, establishing high-quality online communities via social networks is needed to help people enhance their well-being through further interactions. For those who suffer from loneliness, providing them with better access to the Internet may be an effective way to enhance their welfare. From the perspective of mental health, loneliness is related to an increased risk of mental disorders, such as depression, anxiety, and even dementia. Therefore, it is worth recommending that sufferers use the Internet to enhance their communications with others. For people with communication difficulties, online interactions can help them overcome their fear and help them to get in touch with others, thus establishing better social networks [ 90 ].

Third, policymakers should pay more attention to vulnerable subgroups in the Internet age, including older people and those with poorer online skills, those who are less well-educated, and those living in rural areas. These groups gain fewer benefits from Internet usage. Therefore, it is important to help them master the necessary online skills and provide them with more convenient and less expensive access to the Internet. For example, the network coverage should be extended to more remote and rural areas and the Internet connectivity there needs to be improved so that as many people as possible have equal access to the Internet. In addition, with the rapid development of Internet technology, individuals with lower education levels and older age may not be able to update their Internet skills. This may mean that they are unable to gain the benefits of Internet usage in terms of interpersonal communication. Therefore, in the context of the rapid application of emerging online technologies, enhancing the Internet skills of these vulnerable subgroups should be emphasized.

10. Limitations

First, since CGSS data is based on subjective answers, both the explanatory and explained variables in this paper are subjective indicators and there may, thus, be measurement errors caused by subjectivity. Although different variables are used as dependent variables in the robustness checks, confirming the positive effect of Internet usage on interpersonal interactions, these measures are also subjective. Therefore, we look forward to further testing the relationship between Internet usage and interpersonal contacts based on objective indicators in the future.

Second, as CGSS does not provide detailed information concerning the amount of time that people spend on the Internet for various purposes, we are unable to examine the effects of different types of online activities on interpersonal communications. In this regard, if people use the Internet mainly for working or for entertainment, rather than for interpersonal contacts, then online activities may well have a different effect on their communications with family members and friends. In the heterogeneity analysis, this research divided the sample into subgroups with different degrees of online social interactions and different preferences for online self-presentation. The results show that the impacts of Internet usage on communication with family and friends are only significant among those who habitually use the Internet to socialize and post updates. This indirectly examines the impact of different types of Internet usage on communications. We look forward to further investigating this issue in the future, on the basis of more detailed online data.

Third, this paper examines the impact of Internet usage on interpersonal communications in general. However, it is still not clear how Internet usage affects people’s face-to-face interactions. Due to data limitations, we are unable to directly test the quality of offline personal relationships, for example, changes in conversational topics, the willingness to broach topics discussed on the Internet, and the inclination to reveal true thoughts in a face-to-face relationship. The effects of Internet use on the quality of offline communications will be a very valuable research direction in the future.

Funding Statement

This research was funded by the Humanities and Social Science Research Project of the Ministry of Education of China (grant number 19YJC790055); the Project of the Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 71973081); the Project of the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province, China (grant number ZR2020QG038); the Project of the Social Science Foundation of Shandong Province, China (grant number 19DJJJ08), and the Project of Teaching Reform of Shandong University (grant number Y2022007).

Author Contributions

C.L. contributed to the conception and design of the study and performed the statistical analysis. Y.X. generated the tables and figures, respectively, based on C.L.’s analysis. C.L. wrote the first draft of the manuscript. G.N., K.G. and Q.L. worked on revisions of the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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