1 Social Relationships Case Study: When the Internet First Visited Home In 1995 and 1996, 93 families in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, were given computers, soft- ware, telephone lines, and free Internet access by researchers at Carnegie Mellon Univer- sity. The study participants were Internet novices and they did not know many other people who were using the Internet. Known as the HomeNet study, the researchers aimed to evalu- ate what happened when regular families added the Internet to their lives. The research- ers assessed family members across a range of variables between 52 and 104 weeks of having access to the Internet. The researchers learned that interpersonal communication was the main reason that people used the Internet, but for many of the assessment vari- ables, the outcomes were negative. Not only did family members talk to each other less than they had before having Internet access, but there were also increases in loneliness, depression, and stress. People who were lonely at the start of the study did not use the Internet more than others, but people who used the Internet more ended up being lonelier over time. The study authors argued that this showed that using the Internet caused people to become lonely. They found that talking to others online could replace talking to people face-to-face, especially if online relationships are somehow weaker than offline relation- ships. This is referred to as the social displacement hypothesis. Another important finding was that spending more time communicating with somebody via email did not make a par- ticipant feel psychologically closer to that person. In contrast, time spent talking to a person face-to-face increased the psychological closeness that was experienced. In publishing their work, the research team described the phenomenon as an Internet paradox. On the one hand, the Internet is a social technology on the other hand, the Internet reduces social involvement. This first part of the HomeNet study received national attention. When reporting on the study results, the front page of the New York Times on August 30, 1998, read, “Sad, Lonely World Discovered in Cyberspace.” However, most of the effects seen in the study were minimal. For example, the decline in the average size of a person’s nearby social network was 1 person—decreasing from 24 to 23 people. Later results from the HomeNet study suggested that the negative effects on social outcomes were temporary three years after receiving access to the Internet, the loneliness and depression in affected individuals dissi- pated. The researchers began to formulate a new hypothesis: Communicating with others online can expand a person’s existing social network, thus increasing a person’s set of social
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