Social Networking = Social Isolation?
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Sometimes I really wish to have time to go deeper into details on this blog. But so far I will just stick with a few thoughts mixed up with facts, or let’s just they the basics of blogging.
It looks like I missed last year the coverage of the paper by the American Sociological Review on the factor of closed friends in our society.
They compared the number of closed friends people had in
1985 – 2.94
and
2004 – 2.08
(uhm, did it really took almost three years to get this published?)
So in the end, over this period of time Americans almost lost one close person, who is important to them in their lifes. It looks like the time of very closed friends is shifting through technology into a much more open networking time. It is hard to judge in how far this might be positive or negative.
Feel free to digg deeper into this by reading the 23 pages “Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades” research paper. I might do it as well over the weekend…
Stumble it!