The Internet’s Negative Effect on Our Social Skills and How Video Chat Applications are a Positive Influence

The definition of a social lifestyle has change drastically in the last century. Socialites throughout the decades have used different measurements to judge their societal wealth; it could have been the number of parties one attended in the twenties or the number of people that came over for dinner in the fifties. Regardless, you had to have well-tuned manners and social-grace to win over the friendship of others. It seems today to be a different story. Popularity is no longer judged by physical presence in friends, but by the number of them you have on Facebook. The internet is now a socialites’ medium and the more they achieve on it the better. The internet has provided countless new opportunities and benefits, but has it come at the cost of the social skills and manners of each growing generation? It has been argued many times that the internet is causing today’s children more emotional and social problems than ever before, but it is not the end. As technology starts evolving to include visual communication it could be possible that applications, such as Skype, are helping to undo the changes seen. Although the use of the internet has cause a decline in the social skill of its users, Skype and other video communication programs are helping put back the social steps that are missing from non-visual electronic communication.

Wireless electronic communication began a lot earlier than most think: in April of 1880, Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant used crystalline selenium cells and beams of light to send a message across their nearby rooftops. It was not until almost exactly ninety-three years later when Bell Labs of AT&T received a phone call from the former general manager of systems division of their rival. Dr. Martin Cooper of Motorola and American Radio placed the first call on a cellular device in April of 1973 from the street below Bell Laboratories. However, mobile phones did not become a commodity in the United States until the new millennium. Email became the first step towards the creation of the Internet. It began as time-sharing systems in computers in order to communicate in 1965. Up until 1973 there was no word to describe the quickly evolving electronic communication. Finally, around that year, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn abbreviated “inter-networking of networks” to Internet. The internet continued to grow and shape and still continues today.

High-speed communication definitely has its benefits. The web allows its users to be creative; interact with people outside of their daily lives; present new information and ideas; share their experiences with others through media or word; collectively accomplish tasks; and learn new things from others. Different forms of internet communication include, and are not limited to: blogs, online sources, file sharing sites, media sharing sites, and available news websites.

The internet has provided the individual with the opinion of billions of others in a “dynamic and mobile” way. The internet has provided a way for almost everyone in the world to connect in some form with relatively low technological sophistication- not to mention the speed at which the information can be sent and shared. *It has become a staple for research from scientific to random enjoyment by making connections in stories dated as far back as the nineteen hundreds. However, like these stories, technology is beginning to be to center of our world and focus. In the past ten years internet usage has almost doubled in the US with the percentage of internet users in the U.S. population at 78.1% in 2009 (figure 1). It affects our live so much that many are worried that it is affecting the new generations in a negative way.

Fig. 1. Graph of U.S. Population Internet usage since 1990 (accessed from Google. Originally from World Bank, World Development Indicators.)

Like the already researched negative effect of television on children, many- civilian and researcher alike- are worried that the internet is causing a relative but much worse effect. Through a nationwide study conducted in 1999 found that parents saw the usefulness of the internet for their children, yet they still were apprehensive of its negative effects; and they had good reason. A case at a New York university found that 43% of their freshmen dropouts stayed up all night on the internet (1999). Although the all-nighters were not the determining factor of the dropouts the over-usage of the internet still had its effects. A further survey found that many of these students were feeling isolated, alienated, and lonely because of the lack in face-to-face communication (no doubt caused by extended periods of computer usage). In another study conducted by Carneige Mellon University interviewed 169 Pittsburg residents and found trends in the data showing that the more time people spent on the internet was inversely related to the number of friends they kept in touch with. Less family communication, more stress, and an increase in depressed feelings were also reported.

Bob Affonso (in his article Is the Internet Affecting the Social Skills of Our Children) quotes Purdue University educator Michael A. Weinstein as saying that children using the internet a lot will eventually "lose the savvy and skills and patience to conduct social relations in the corporeal world." The previous Pittsburg study also found that adult Internet users were on less often and used it for work-related information a majority of the time while a majority of the teenagers used the Internet for games, music, and social aspects. If these children are condemned to the fate Weinstein describes then eventually our generations will be socially incompetent. But why is this?

In the book Psychology and the Internet: Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, and Transpersonal Implications different reasons and theories for why this happens are presented. De-individuation is one of the predicted and studied effects of the internet on its users. Because of the lack of self in one’s internet personalities, a person might lose focus from the audience they are trying to reach and focus only on the task. Conversations held online also tend to become informal and heated (emotionally and verbally)much more quickly than those held face to face. The author, Jayne Gackenback, also observed that social occurrences with face-to-face communication present social and context clues that are lacking from computational communication. Online relationships tend to not have a set social hierarchy from the absence in status and leadership cues.

On the other hand, “socialness” still occurs on the internet. Other cues such as emoticons and signatures can help make something more personable and can help to bring “socialness” back into electronic communication. Last Gackenback presents the two-component self-awareness theory; it says that although computer communication causes a decrease in public self-awareness, users tend to have a greater private awareness. This means that their definition of themselves to themselves becomes strong while skills towards others fall. So with these thing in mind is there a way out? Skype may be what the world needs.

Launched in 2003 Skype is a technology that allows users the ability to talk with anyone with a webcam, worldwide, for free. The major part of Skype is that it incorporates video into calls between two people (for free) or more-for additional costs. Applications using face-to-face communication through video may be the answer to the prayers of those feeling the pain from lack of social skill. Through the video conferences social cues are introduced back into the environment along with other things computational communication lacked. Gackenback concludes her chapter with a study where the amount of informal talk was measured in face-to-face, anonymous chat rooms, non-anonymous chat rooms, and email. Next each group was asked to reach a decision on a task. Researchers then calculated how long it took for each condition to reach a level of informal communication- defined as talk with “swearing, name calling, and insults”. Significant differences were seen from face to face communication and situations involving computers with computers have higher levels and faster times. Emotions tend to become much more heated when social cues are not present to keep them in check. Anonymity and informality is also a factor in the breach of polite communication rules. Higher levels were also observed in this study in situations using a computer with the chat rooms being of higher levels than email. The return of social cues into electronic conversations has occurred with video chatting and may become the redeeming factor of the declining social ability in new generations.
Face to face communication has proven to be overall better from the societal social aspect, and Skype is a way to incorporate that into modern day technology; it provides everything necessary for healthy conversation. Results from Skype should see a more polite world in the upcoming years because of its new technologies. Skype is really are helping put back the social steps that are missing from non-visual electronic communication and with the help of other video conferencing applications could change what we know of communication entirely.