Isolation or Influence?

I’ve been thinking recently about the large number of Internet tools that are emerging for managing social activity. I wondered – how much time do people spend using them? Is there a danger that, rather than promoting social activity, the outcome is a rise in anti-social activity? This article examines whether there is an unacknowledged social threat associated with a digital lifestyle.

The world is a dangerous place, but this is a reality with which the digital generation are comfortable. Teenagers today are used to media scares affecting every fascet of modern life. They won’t be surprised, therefore, when they discover that the Internet – the very fabric of their social existence – is the subject of the latest health scare.

Psychologists have long lined up to offer help for our cyber-inflicted neuroses. An organisation known as the Internet Addiction Centre, for example, offers services to combat over-indulgence in everything from cyber-sex to eBay. These afflictions, though, are merely off-line vices that have jumped the virtual gap. Does the Internet itself pose a threat to our health?

Yes, according to psychiatrist Dr Himanshu Tyagi. He warned the Royal College of Psychiatrists that:

People used to the quick pace of on-line social networking may soon find the real world boring and unstimulating. It may be possible that young people who have no experience of a world without on-line societies put less value on their real world identities and can therefore be at risk in their real lives, perhaps more vulnerable to impulsive behaviour or even suicide.

London clinic Capio Nightingale have launched a treatment service for ‘e-isolation’. Nerina Ramlakhan, resident psychologist at Capio, helps patients focus on rebuilding the link between mind and body.

So is the Internet just the latest scare story, or are we really in as deep as the psychologists suggest? The figures don’t give much cause for optimism. Facebook, the most active on-line social network, has 250 million active users who spend 5 billion minutes collectively on the site, every day. In the last year alone, Facebook usage increased by 700% and Twitter usage by 3700%.

When listening to the scare stories and the frightening statistics, though, we would do well to remember that the Internet is no longer the parallel virtual world it used to be. The average Facebook user has 120 real life social contacts. As a result children are now chatting to real children – we know with more certainty that Nancy, 12, from London isn’t Ken, 45, from Iowa, because she actually lives in our street. Far from an environment starving users of social interaction, on-line social networks are being used to organise over 2.5 million real life social events every month. On balance, then, is the Internet actually promoting social integration?

Anyone with a smart-phone will tell you that mobile Internet has revolutionised the use of on-line services. It has provided the missing link between virtual spaces and physical reality. Take the G20 protests, for example. Organisers announced in advance that Twitter was their communication medium of choice. The recent Green Revolution in Iran was also powered by Twitter, which not only allowed the world to express sympathy with the opposition, but allowed Iranians to communicate their message back to the world. Rather than anti-social, these online services have become, overnight, a force for social change. The change has been so dramatic that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown commented recently that on-line services could even prevent the next genocide.

Information would come out far more quickly about what is actually going on and the public opinion would grow to the point where action would need to be taken … Foreign policy can no longer be the province of just a few elites.

Of course, it isn’t as simple as tweeting and changing. While the Internet can be a powerful tool for social change, it must be harnessed correctly. Without a suitable link between on-line and off-line, we run the risk of isolating ourselves and suffering. Forge that link effectively enough, though, and not only will you avoid isolation, you could even find yourself a work-from-home policy advisor.