Authors: Jeremy Chia, Tracy Smith and Eric Tam
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Living in today's society means being constantly exposed to the buzz surrounding the Internet: nearly every day, we are told that it is going to change every aspect of how we work and play. If, however, the Internet is going to be as revolutionary as Silicon Valley's marketing departments predict, one has to ask how this revolution will affect the way we interact with each other in our everyday lives. Specifically, what effect will a high level of exposure to the Internet, and its various forms of associated Computer-Mediated Communication media (CMC), have on our social skills-the set of basic rules and instincts we each possess, which help us interact with one another in a civil, appropriate, and comfortable manner-in the offline world? There appear to be three possibilities. Some social theorists argue that high exposure to heavily mediated, primarily anonymous interaction will degrade the social skills of Internet users in offline environments. Conversely, there are other researchers who assert that exposure to CMC environments can potentially improve the social skills of its users. Finally, there is the possibility that the Internet will have neither a positive nor a negative net effect on individuals' social skills by our standards, either because the medium will have a relatively negligible effect on our social interactions, or because it will have such a powerful impact on these interactions that it will completely reshape the way we think about them, rendering it impossible for us to make positive or negative judgements based on our current viewpoint. This paper hopes to outline each of the above arguments, and then offer policy recommendations based on our research results.
In the midst of the enthusiasm surrounding the Internet, it has been difficult to focus on its potential downfalls. Although unpopular, there exist a number of arguments that postulate that the Internet has detrimental effects on social interaction. The thrust of this argument is not concerned with the use of the Internet as a tool or as a supplementary form of interaction. Rather, there is a greater fear that the increasing prevalence of CMC use will facilitate the replacement of traditional forms of interaction by eroding the social skills necessary to undertake them.
The majority of arguments used by those who are sceptical of the Internet's effects on interaction are, paradoxically, based on the same evidence that grounds the arguments employed by the Internet's more ardent proponents. This convergence is a consequence of the medium's novelty, the paucity of adequate theory specifically tailored to the field, and the uncertainty of any predictions made on the basis of often unreliable evidence (much of the research tends to based on self-reported surveys, anecdotes, and cross-sectional field studies of small groups). As a result, the same evidence is often used to support directly opposing positions.
Sceptics of the Internet focus on the characteristics of CMC environments that diverge from the offline norm. These divergent traits have the potential to harm the quality of traditional forms of communication and interaction by spilling over into the offline world. Perhaps the most frequently noted divergent characteristic of CMC is its almost total lack of visual cues.
In everyday face-to-face interaction, most people rely heavily on visual cues. While visual cues may occasionally encourage stereotypes that create barriers to communication, they are usually at least somewhat beneficial. Visual cues help us read body language, share emotions, and interact without verbalization. CMC, in contrast, does not allow users access to such visual cues. Many supporters of the Internet have argued that the absence of these cues has fostered a more egalitarian online community. Furthermore, it has been argued that the lack of visual cues available in text-based environments has been compensated for with the creation of smileys, new acronyms, abbreviations, and idioms, which functionally serve as replacements for the visual and physical communication of emotions (see tables 1 & 2).
However, despite arguments to the contrary, the quality of CMC interaction remains problematic, as do its social implications. The celebration of the Internet as a great equalizer is recklessly premature. The ability to adapt to new environments has both positive and negative effects. While traditional hierarchies and class structures based on visual cues may be mostly eliminated by the Internet's textual environment, it is only a matter of time before some sort of stratification become evident. For example, in his study of Phish.net, Nessim Watson demonstrates that despite the lack of visual cues, hierarchies are still established via the internet through other indications of status, such as subject knowledge.
While this example dealt specifically with newsgroups, hierarchies are also prevalent in amongst other forms of computer-mediated communications, such as MUDs. These collectives create ranks of status by allowing users to measure themselves against one another. The criteria can be broadly based to include knowledge, skill, experience and loyalty. Therefore, while the Internet's lack of visual cues may initially reduce prejudice and inequality, this benefit is only temporary.
The benefits of using smileys and other emoticons along with text as a replacement for face-to-face interaction are similarly problematic. People who rely on this relatively superficial mode of communicating emotions are accepting a very poor substitute for the richness and genuineness of physical interaction. Yet, many CMC users now consider these devices adequate replacements for unmediated displays of emotion. If people become accustomed to mediated, textual communication in preference to unmediated face-to-face contact, they may lose the ability to read body language and to react to it. Consequently, frequent CMC users may have a hard time successfully acknowledging the subtle signals used in offline communication, and may find it difficult to empathize with others in offline situations.
Another unique aspect of CMC environments is the anonymity that they allow their participants. CMC advocates claim that the distance and privacy afforded by the Internet allow for more open forums of social interaction. However, there are numerous problems that may result from this anonymity, and which could prove detrimental to offline interaction. The first problem is a consequence of the constant deception that this anonymity allows. Supporters of the Internet have claimed that this anonymity is a benefit because it allows individuals to experiment with their personalities by giving them the opportunity to interact under the guise of different identities. Arguably, this process of self-creation grants users a sense of empowerment. Yet, while it may be true that the individuals involved feel somewhat empowered from being able to swap identities at will, this regime of obfuscation has greater implications for the larger community. The accepted prevalence of distortions or outright deception regarding personal identities creates an atmosphere deficient in trust. The environment's lack of visual cues combines with the nearly total anonymity to completely undermine the possibility of secure socializing. This atmosphere of uncertainty badly hinders the healthy development of personal relationships. In the Internet community, everyone is presenting an illusory identity, so users are forced to be overly cautious when engaging in social interaction. Prolonged immersion in this sort of suspicious culture, especially at an early age, could drastically change how one regards face-to-face interaction. The entire notion of trust would become highly questionable in an environment in which everyone is habituated toward constructing an image in lieu of presenting an authentic self.
The appeal of the ability to shed one's identity becomes more plausible when one considers people who have problems socializing offline. Research has shown that extroverts tend to use the Internet less than introverts. Moreover, there has been an indication that such users may succumb more easily to loneliness, stress, and depression. This is not to say that all Internet users are depressed introverts; however, CMC does cater specifically to this group by eliminating many of the obstacles they may have with face-to-face interaction. In short, the computer becomes a safe haven. CMCs further reinforce this sense of safety for less assertive users by allowing them to select the people with whom they interact. However, these many layers of safety have a negative consequence: people who frequently use CMC may "lose the ability to enter into spontaneous interaction with real people." We might be able to avoid the awkward misunderstandings of spontaneous offline interaction most of the time, but only at the price of losing the skills we need to interact in such environments. There are numerous reasons as to why this shield of safety would cause social skills to atrophy. The ability to monitor social interactions will likely encourage a lazy and spoiled attitude, as CMC users will always be able to choose the time and place of interaction, as well as the people with whom they interact. Although users who already have introverted tendencies would certainly find that such an environment caters to their needs, they would also become dependent on it, making it even more difficult for them to partake in offline socialization.
Finally, the Internet's anonymity may affect the overall quality of social interaction for all of society. The computer's overwhelming sense of anonymous safety may allow individuals, introverted or not, to shed the behavioural norms expected in face-to-face interaction. As one ten-year-old notes, "the Web is the only place where you can insult someone and not have to worry about them pulling a gun on you." While it is true that the Net may afford safety, one has to question the value of shielding people to allow them to make such comments: what exactly could one say that would evoke such a violent reaction, and why would this be more acceptable simply because it was communicated through a computer screen? Rude and insulting behaviour is very much a part of the online world, and even its most enthusiastic proponents grudgingly admit its high frequency in CMC environments. While remaining a supporter of the Internet, Walther admits that flaming (swearing, insults, and hostility) is part of this uninhibited environment; he attempts to qualify these negative aspects of CMC, like other CMC proponents, by claiming that their acceptability fosters free speech and self-assertion. But it could additionally be argued that people act completely differently on and off-line, and that an anonymous environment encourages them to ignore social restraints on rude behaviour. Furthermore, increasing reliance on the Internet means that it is not unlikely that frequent users who become comfortable with such behaviour may eventually be so accustomed to it that it leaks into their offline personalities, making the social skills of politeness and respect practices of the past.
In addition to the Internet's anonymity, there is also the problem of its task-oriented nature. In the offline world, people interact for a variety of reasons in both planned and spontaneous meetings. As noted above, the online environment allows for a great deal of control over the context of interaction. Consequently, many supporters of CMC have argued that it makes it much more convenient for people to meet others with similar goals and objectives. However, it may be questionable whether this sort of contact could be properly deemed interaction at all. In his book on virtual culture, Steven Jones argues that the constructs of the Internet are similar to old library reading rooms, which were "places to be among and not with, in terms of interaction." Although people are communicating online, it does not mean that they are necessarily socializing. Moreover, in an atmosphere based on goals and interests instead of obligations and responsibility, it is less likely that participants will feel a high degree of emotional attachment to the group. In effect, the social skills practised online may not be valuable for building intimate and lasting relationships. In one study of 77 users and their online messages, it was found that only 28% contained socioemotional content, while 71% were of a task-oriented nature. The prioritizing of duty over emotion could have severe effects in an offline world which is already displaying an ever-increasing need to quicken life's pace. People have already become so caught up in their goals and objectives that a culture of isolated individuals has emerged. The traditions of interactive physical communities are quickly passing into obsolescence. While it is true that the Internet does allow for new arenas of interaction, it only does so at the cost of threatening to erode our traditional modes of socializing. The social skills once used spontaneously to execute tasks and to build lasting relationships may become atrophied, as the former gain an exagerrated amount of importance, while the latter become increasingly shrouded in superficiality.
The dominant task-oriented nature of the Internet encourages a fast-paced culture. This last aspect of the online environment could also prove detrimental for social interaction. One should consider the effects of a communication medium in which users are able to multitask and to jump from one site and task to another instantly and easily. Might such an environment foster a generation of individuals with short attention spans? In his study of the Internet and children, Don Tapscott has argued that short attention spans are normal for children and that the ability to remain attentive improves with age. However, this assumption is based on an obsolete model and on data extracted from a short time-frame. In the years to come, it is possible that the real consequences of the Internet generation will surface. While the adults using the Internet may have already developed their ability to remain attentive, the current generation of youth who are immersing themselves in the Internet's warp-speed environment may be destroying their own attention spans. If Internet users internalize this fast-paced environment, their social skills could be affected on a variety of levels. Conversations could begin to resemble online communication, which jump from one subject to another without really addressing any issue at all. A whole community of distracted individuals would probably have major consequences on political decision-making and lobbying. It therefore seems likely that this aspect of the Internet could foster behavioural patterns that will spread beyond the online environment, degrading both the frequency and quality of in-depth offline social interaction.
The above arguments are not meant to show that the Internet is an unqualified evil. Instead, they are meant to illustrate how an online environment may prove detrimental for offline interaction. There are certainly reasonable arguments supporting the beneficial nature of this new medium for social interaction (some of which are addressed below). However, it is critical to remember that the Internet's characteristics may represent a serious threat to the social skills that are necessary for traditional forms of communication. These social skills, which may be ineffectual in an online world, may be supplanted by those more suitable for CMC-based interaction. While not all of these threats may materialize, these possible consequences should be addressed before wholeheartedly embracing a medium that is very likely to completely change the way in which we interact with one another.
The argument that the prolonged use of the Internet improves social skills is based primarily on the premise that such forms of social interaction will be free of a number of the problems that persist in offline forms of communication. These problems include discrimination and stereotyping (on the basis of race, gender, age, physical disabilities, and culture), in addition to the lack of participation and cooperation that often plagues the offline world.
The assertion that the absence of non-verbal/visual cues creates relationships where (initially at least) all parties are equally respected is a common one. Unable to associate any preconceived assumptions or stereotypes to others' physical attributes, participants of CMC are forced to develop relationships that are predicated on the exchange of ideas and feelings through text-based messages. This clearly achieves the minimization (if not the eradication) of most forms of physical and cultural discrimination which are often barriers to communication and cooperation. Joseph Walther proposes that a 'social information processing' perspective explains how CMC participants interact: "[c]ertain drives, or relational motivators, may prompt communicators to develop distinctive impressions of other interactants by decoding text-based cues and deriving psychological-level knowledge about other actors from CMC interaction." According to this perspective, individuating knowledge is gained through verbally-based probing strategies over time. Some thinkers have argued that these probing strategies involve methods of decoding text to identify social attributes. Many such forms of communication may help shift the emphasis of a relationship from superficial attributes to deeper interaction. Thus, social affinity amongst participants is determined by factors that lie closer to their true inner characteristics, rather than the superficial visual characteristics that predominate when using offline media.
There exists a strong relationship between social information processing and the expression and perception of social identities on the Internet. The Internet transcends almost all of the planet's geographical boundaries and cultural spheres and allows communication between millions of people who have no other means of making contact. Because of the Internet's wide reach, it is nearly impossible to assume anything about anyone you meet in a CMC environment, so participants have more control over the expression of their identity than in face-to-face interaction. The absence of a physical environment online also stresses the importance of other personal characteristics that may be otherwise overlooked during face-to-face interaction. Daniel Littler is optimistic about this possibility: "[a]s we know so little about those with whom we communicate online, perhaps our concern for the way in which we present ourselves will in some respects diminish. Universally-recognized characteristics, such as a sense of humour, could play an even more central role within our identities in the future." If this realization extends past the realm of CMCs and into our offline lives, the increased appreciation for these "universal characteristics" will serve to enhance social skills in the global sense. With CMCs, people from different cultural backgrounds tend to find more common points of reference than differences on which to base their social interactions and communication-this is a stark contrast to face-to-face interaction, where one might be quickly discomfited because of a foreign person's accent, bearing, or body language. For example, the members of Phish.net, an online fan-based forum, have managed to maintain a virtual community where "race, gender, and sexual orientation are non-issues" because they have identified several points of reference. 'Community belonging' is determined by displayed knowledge, repeated presence, and the possession of collected tapes. These are the group's primary cues of importance. Littler suggests another potentially beneficial effect of the Internet-the reduction in the importance of gender differences:
the sex of those we meet on the Net will, like geographically-based points of reference, with time become less relevant in the formation of identity, especially as long-distance Net-based relationships become more common. An environment where gender-related performances were of diminished relevance would help us to come to conclusions about the extent of innate differences between men and women.
Many observers claim that computer-mediated interaction encourages wider participation, greater candor, and an emphasis on merit over status. It is commonly believed that social hierarchies will be dissolved and that networked communications will introduce a renewed era of democratic participation. As was discussed earlier, anonymity in CMCs and greater control over the expression of one's identity allow for a high degree of initial social equality in such environments. It is not conceptually difficult to understand why such environments facilitate greater participation, especially amongst marginalized and minority groups. However, of greater interest is the issue of cooperation in general. Do CMCs promote greater cooperation amongst its participants? At the root of the problem of cooperation is that the tension that often exists between individual and collective rationality. Although CMC forums cannot directly force cooperation, they may be able eliminate many superficial external factors (such as those outlined above), which may be extraneous sources of tension, leaving the topic of discussion as the sole and primary focus. This effect would indirectly facilitate cooperation. There may be other factors promoted by Internet use that might increase cooperation amongst individuals both online and offline. Since conflict results from the inability to resolve differences between individual and collective rationality, a recognition and degree of understanding of the rationale of 'the other' may help alleviate this conflict. The rich, diverse, and multinational culture of the Internet helps its users acquire this understanding. Finally, Littler presents another factor that may aid cooperation: "[w]e should in fact be optimistic about the blurring of the established concept of identity-experimentation with new personae [on the Internet] could lead to the reconsideration of the ways in which we perceive others." This is but one example of how the opportunity for Internet participants to take on radically different identities offline could have positive consequences.
CMC participants "exchange pleasantries and argue, engage in intellectual discourse, conduct commerce, exchange knowledge, share emotional support, make plans, brainstorm, gossip, feud, fall in love, find friends and lose them, play games, flirt, create a little high art and a lot of idle talk." However, all of these activities are accomplished in a text-based environment. As a result, participants are forced to adopt creative and interesting strategies to compensate for the lack of visual cues. These include knowledge-generating strategies, creative keyboarding, parenthetical expression, keyboard characters, and other personalized additions. Howard Rheingold sums up this phenomenon optimistically: "CMC not only lends itself to social uses but is, in fact, a site for an unusual amount of social creativity...Social realities are created through interaction as participants draw on language and the resources available to make messages that serve their purposes."
While numerous social theorists are involved in an often-polarized debate over whether the Internet and CMC will have harmful or beneficial effects on human interaction, there is also evidence that suggests that the Internet will have neither a "good" nor a "bad" net effect on the quality of offline social skills. There are two general hypotheses that predict this result; interestingly enough, they are completely incompatible. The first hypothesis predicts that the Internet's impact on humans' offline social skills will be negligible because the rules and experiences of the offline world will always be the dominant normative forces in the lives of almost everyone in the offline world. The second hypothesis runs in the opposite direction and predicts that we will not have any basis whatsoever for judging the effect of the Internet on offline social skills because the Internet's power as a medium will be so great that it will entirely reshape our perceptions and social interactions in the offline world, and therefore entirely redefine our normative ideas about social skills. According to this hypothesis, all of our ideas about what constitutes "good" and "bad" social skills will be reshaped so radically by the power of the Internet that attempting to make a normative statement about whether or not the Internet will be beneficial for our offline social skills will be completely meaningless, since such normative statements would be entirely defined by the Internet's culture.
Research may eventually show that the mores of the offline world are ultimately much more powerful than the Internet's effects. If so, offline codes of behaviour will always remain the supreme arbiter as to what constitutes proper social skills. As a result, the norms of online social interaction will always be shaped so that they conform to those of the offline world. CMC users will ultimately adapt either their behaviour or the form of the media to enable the replication of these norms within online environments.
Bellamy and Hanewicz , for example, offer evidence that informants completing a offline survey about their online experiences were significantly less likely to engage in the putatively typical antisocial online behaviour of flaming if they perceived the presence of 'norms' in online environments. The work of Rafaeli and Sudweeks also suggests that the dominance of offline social standards may be propagated within CMC social groups through a process akin to natural selection: unless a CMC social group develops levels and modes of interactivity similar to those available in offline groups, the researchers believe that the CMC group will have a difficult time maintaining a stable membership. The use of smileys, emoticons, common abbreviations, and idioms to indicate emotion or physical action (usually used in synchronous venues such as IRC), are common methods used by CMC participants to adapt the Internet to include more elements of the offline world. Suler sees the usage of such idioms as expressions of the natural human inclination to "find ways around...a limit" and "to creatively fiddle with...a seemingly simple and straightforward medium." Finally, results from research on online relationships by Floyd and Parks show that nearly two-thirds CMC users still require conventional offline media or face-to-face communication to supplement relationships formed on the Internet, a finding that seems to suggest that even heavy CMC participants require contact in the offline world to validate their relationships.
Another possibility is that CMC users will always be able to perceive the demarcation between the online and offline worlds easily and clearly enough to prevent online social habits from 'leaking' into the offline world, leaving their offline social skills unaffected by heavy exposure to CMCs. According to Jones, one of the greatest attractions of the Internet is that it gives users both "the means to remain anonymous in [their] communication and the means to break off interaction and observation with the flick of a switch or click of a mouse." This easily accessible 'off' switch enables users to detach themselves conveniently and completely from the online environment at will, a trait that helps maintain a distinct boundary between CMC environments and the offline world. The study by Floyd and Parks above, which supplies evidence of Internet users' need to validate their online relationships with offline meetings, also shows that online users are aware of the distinction between online and offline environments. This point is summed up well by Chenault, who notes that while "'online' and 'offline' life can be seen as permeable, people do still feel the need to talk about them differently and to segment their two 'lives.'"
Conversely, there is also the possibility that we may not be able to properly say whether or not the Internet will harm the offline social skills of its users because the medium's transformative power will be so great that the radically different rules of its online world will impose themselves on the offline world and completely alter our conceptions of social relations. The theoretical basis grounding the argument that new forms of media have the potential to completely reframe our view of the world can be traced back to the musings of Canadian social philosopher Marshall McLuhan. Although McLuhan's medium theory has been met with scepticism for a long time, many social scientists are now asserting that the Internet's incredible power has the potential to completely reshape the human consciousness. These contemporary theorists note that the Internet and CMC media are "an enigma in traditional, rational, and economic terms," that they give us a "godlike power to create identities...[leading] to a world of the word made flesh," that they provide environments in which "people can create their identities 'from scratch'...[t]hey can change it, and play around with it, constantly, if they choose." Frequent interaction in such environments makes it possible that people exposed to these conditions wil eventually come to view the world through a framework that casts social skills in a manner that is completely different from our traditional perspectives. Suler, for example, cites a number of different types of IRC speech that seem to have no close correlate to forms of speech we use in offline life: "Staccato Speak," "To-the Point" speech, and 'telepathic' communication (i.e.: private speech sent between users while they are conducting other activities in a public forum).
Another possible effect of the Internet is that it might have differential effects on different types of Internet users, harming the social skills of one group of people while augmenting the social skills of a similar number of other people, resulting in a zero-sum net effect. For every group of people who try CMC and find that it damages their social skills because of reasons such as those outlined above, there may well be another group of formerly awkward people whose social lives have been resurrected by the Internet, and who will wholeheartedly agree that the Internet provides "opportunities for those who are isolated or disabled in ways that restrict or stigmatize them in face-to-face communications."
The study of CMCs and their social and psychological interactions and implications is clearly in its infancy, and categorically decisive arguments and proofs are very sparse. Given the many different (and often diametrically opposing) conclusions that can be drawn regarding the Internet's effects on social interaction, the possibility that the medium might have no effect on offline social skills at all is one that must be seriously considered by participants on all sides of the debate.
From our research, we have found some evidence for all three of the positions that we identified at the beginning of this project. There is a moderate amount research that suggests that the anonymous, the lack of visual cues, and the task-oriented nature that characterize the Internet's environment may degrade the social skills that are necessary for traditional offline social interaction. Furthermore, there are also scholars who argue that the fast pace and multitasking-oriented nature of the online milieu may also encourage inattentiveness in our youth. However, there exists a greater amount research supporting the argument that the rise of the Internet may slightly improve the quality of social interaction by habituating users to an environment without visual cues, thereby reducing discrimination and stereotyping and encouraging creativity and diversity. All of these positive traits may also foster cooperation.
Yet, predominantly, our research is marked by uncertainty. Especially intriguing, as well as troubling, is the great deal of evidence available that can support one of two diametrically opposing arguments that both lead to a similar conclusion: that the Internet will not produce a change that we are able to clearly label as either positive or negative. We found both support for the first argument, that asserts that the effect of the offline world will greatly overestimated; as well as for the more problematic second argument, which suggests the possibility that the effect of the Internet will be so radical that it will completely redefine our social skills, leaving us with no basis to judge whether or not the changes are positive or negative. We believe that, overall, there is a great deal of uncertainty about what kind of effect heavy Internet use will have on the offline world, and that much more research needs to be done in this field of study.
Given the ambivalence of our research findings, we are unwilling to either write off the Internet altogether or to embrace it wholeheartedly. CMC and Internet research-especially research on the effects of online exposure on offline behaviour-is still in an emergent state; neither the theoretical nor the empirical body of scholarship is adequate to support very strong conclusions. If there were one policy recommendation that we could unequivocally endorse, it would be to place greater emphasis on this field of study. However, the findings in this paper can support some moderate policy recommendations.
Employing Franklin's concept of minimizing risk, our recommendations for policy with regard to the use of CMCs would be to employ these technologies in a manner that would minimize the potential negative consequences, as opposed to attempting to maximize its benefits (and therefore also increasing the likelihood of associated uncertainties and risks). For example, with regard to education, we would not recommend spending money to increase connectivity. While the Internet may have great potential for dampening the unfortunate legacies of race, gender, and ability discrimination left with our youth, or for promoting cooperation and more in-depth understanding of other cultures, making extensive capital investments to harness these benefits when they are uncertain and potential drawbacks are possible seems very unwise. There are other methods and devices that can also encourage the same benefits; in any case, the Internet seems to be such a quickly spreading technology that if the putative benefits outlined in this paper do exist, most of our youth will be exposed to them regardless. To minimize the possible harm that the Internet's unique environment might do to our children's social skills, we would advise funding for humanities and social sciences courses aimed at the critical study of the effects of technology and media on society and individuals.
For our communities in general, we would recommend that they be very cautious in investing to increase connectivity and to supplement investments in connectivity with an increase in support for programs that promote social coherence. Since funds spent on behalf of a community ought to foster a greater amount of community spirit, it does not seem prudent to invest heavily in a technology that might directly undermine this goal. Instead, our recommendation would be to supplement community funding of connectivity (which will occur regardless of our recommendations, because of the other advantages that the Internet offers) with funding for initiatives that buttress social unity, such as those led by community centres, local non-profit organizations, and libraries. Furthermore, as suggested by Krout et al , we would recommend that communities also attempt to use the Internet to encourage "[m]ore intense development and deployment of services that support preexisting communities and strong relationships." Examples given by Krout, et al. of such services include websites devoted to building communities or to attracting volunteers for non-profit organizations, and using interactive online sessions to assist students rather than simply posting class notes and references.
Our paper hopes to have explored out some of the possible problems and benefits of Internet use on offline social skills. While we were not able to come to any categorical conclusions due to the relative novelty of our subject, we did find evidence that the effect of Internet use on social skills would not likely be either wholly positive nor wholly negative. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of our findings was that there was an ample amount of evidence that supported both the possibility that extensive Internet use might have an incredibly radical, perspective-altering effect on society, as well as an ample amount of evidence supporting the possibility that Internet use might have a negligible effect. On the basis of these uncertain conclusions, we have decided that the most prudent course of action would be to recommend policy proposals that minimize the risks involved with a moderate amount of Internet usage.
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