Identical studies between 1999 and 2001 looking at Internet use and psychological well-being came to opposite conclusions in part because of the incredible growth of online social networks. In the seemingly primitive era of the 1990s, we conceptualized the Internet as a place to find information. Interaction was still defined as between human and computer. Today, however, the Internet has taken on different meaning. Instant messaging, blogs, VoIP, and social networks such as Friendster and thefacebook have changed our notion of what it means to go online. Going online to find information? Of course. But going online to talk to friends we saw in person this morning or two years ago (or have never met in real life), to find a dating partner, to network for one's professional life, or to discuss news and current events that matter to us? That certainly was not what it was like in the early 90's. But these thriving networks that now exist have changed our online landscape, and they're very much a part of our lives. The Internet was once barren of humanness. Because of these social gatherings, it is now bursting with energy, expectation, and what many consider as very real relationships. The Internet has essentially taken on meaning, and how we work and socialize online has become a significant part of our identity.

It is not to say, however, that this thriving community is the utopia that technological optimists imagined. Like the relationships and social problems we see in daily life, social problems exist online and manifest themselves -- sometimes in subtle ways and sometimes tied to the technology. In the following articles, we will show you how the meaning of being and interacting online can be more nuanced than you've imagined.

Instant Messaging (IM) might very well be the first of its kind in networked presence technology. Instant text communication with friends on ones buddy list often with more than one buddy at a time easily conveys the sense of belonging to an online community. More intriguing is that with metaphors like entering and leaving IM, personal chats, and away messages such as Im taking a shower, ones friends can get instantaneous information about their buddy and similarly anticipate his or her return. For all users, IM provides an easy way of not losing touch with friends because of IMs affordance of presence.

It is, then, no wonder that this technology so easily attracts teenagers and college students. IM gives instant feedback about what ones friends are doing and allows the individual to multitask and feel satisfied about being connected about belonging to a community. Madison Ryckman, a sophomore in the Denver School of Arts admits that IM-ing makes you feel like you are really connected to the entire world, because if you arent on, you could miss something. (1) For others, such as native Californian Mindy Snitow, an undergraduate at Harvard College, IMing is one of the only ways in her busy life that she can keep in touch with friends attending colleges across the nation.

The positive aspects of IMs are obvious: it is easily usable technology that allows one to stay connected with friends, find new friends, and develop an online community. At the same time, IMing presents many negatives, particularly for young adults between the ages of 12 to 17. Some are obvious repercussions. Today, parents gripe about IM being the addiction that TV or talking on the phone once was for their sons and daughters. Having an entire buddy list of friends to chat with often presents a time consuming reprieve, or substitution, for school work*. Face-to-face interaction with family is lost because of this demanding technology: for adolescents feeling the demands of socialization at their age, how could they possibly say no to a buddy who sends a message to chat?

While the IM presents itself as a harmless piece of technology with pleasant features such as emoticons (emotion icons such as :) or :P ) and pleasant sounds of a door opening when a buddy logs on, the social implications are nevertheless plentiful, particularly for adolescents who flock to their buddy lists after school each day.

University of San Diego assistant professor specializing in media studies, Susannah Stern, says, Kids are using it to enhance their reputations by appearing to be affiliated with a lot of people. A buddy list can indicate how popular you are If someone IMs you and it takes them 10 minutes to get back to you, theres validation that they are busy. Theres a lot of maneuvering in terms of enhancing social status. (1) For adolescents, those whove just start learning the rites of socialization, IM is becoming one of the main tools in establishing identity and status. The ability to express oneself through the personal profile, creative language (including IM language such as LOL or ROFLMAO), and emoticons all help to create ones identity. Further, with actions such as a 10-minute delayed response (which implies a persons high importance or rudeness depending on the other persons view), it is easy to see how IMing is the new socialization medium used by young adults.

While IM has replicated the high school clique (the buddy list) and established status (how many buddies one has, who those buddies are, and how one interacts with those buddies), IMing nevertheless presents an alarming departure from traditional methods of interaction, such as via face-to-face or phone. This departure, fixed in the nature of IMing, will significantly alter how adolescents view and choose their friends online. Because IMing has become such a popular means of socialization for adolescents, IM, and the friends created and maintained through IM, will critically affect the socialization growth of adolescents.

It has been long established that trust is essential in establishing friendships. In the March April 2004 edition of Behavior and Information Technology, Jinjuan Feng, Jonathan Lazar, and Jenny Preece published a paper exploring how individuals establish trust online. They conducted studies on how participants reacted to different scenarios involving trust while on IM. What they found was that there was no relationship between trust between friends online and trust in daily life. They discovered that two factors, empathetic accuracy and supportive-style response, were critical in developing online trust. An empathetically accurate (correct inference of the participants feelings), and a supportively-styled response (response that reflects the empathy) garnered more trust. Surprisingly, in specific situations, people who are more likely to trust others in their daily life are more reluctant to trust people in the online environment. And people who are less likely to trust others in their daily lives are more ready to trust people online. (3)

Instant Messaging, therefore, is the perfect medium to invite misinterpretation about trust, and consequently, interpersonal relationships. The person who responds most empathetically and supportively via IM might not be the most trusting person that one would confide in in real life. And therein likes the paradox of Instant Messaging: the people we meet and talk to online might not necessarily be the people we meet offline.

Adolescents who innocently wander into IM with the intention of creating long lasting friendships, therefore, can be easily fooled. They could very well confide in those who care little but seem to care, while those who genuinely do care might easily be dismissed based on the difference in trust online and offline. Molly Barrett, a high school senior in Denver, Colorado, says, Instant messaging becomes less important when you become more comfortable with who you are. For post-adolescents who have treaded the socialization path and found the value in themselves and close friends, the need for IM becomes less obvious. But for those a few years younger, in the height of their adolescence, and bubbling to talk to everyone, the IMs inherent ability to warp trust and friendships is a hidden and very troubling problem in todays new village presence technology.

References:
(1) Wheeler, Sheba R. Teen2: OMG. can't believe i'm IMing, doing homework, talking on the cell AND watching MTV. ROTFL!!!! Teens' lifeline: 'Net-working. Denver Post. 2 December 2004: F-01.

* IMing also presents problems as a piece of interruptive technology. Due to the unanticipated nature of these messages, they disrupt one from the task at hand often at frequent intervals. While it is easy to argue that one should just log off with such disruptions, sometimes, the social implications are significant. The users friends might feel rebuffed by the user because she or he declined to talk to them and be a part of the online community. For the user, by logging off, she or he might feel that she or he is no longer connected to the entire world. Consequently, the user would often much rather withstand such disruptions for fear of being negatively viewed by friends or feel marginalized by them. The cost of staying on, however, comes at a significant price according to cognitive psychologists. Such small and often lengthy interruptions, added together, could easily detour one from his or her mental to-do list and significantly lengthen his or her task at hand, possibly threatening completion. (2)

(2) McCabe, Bruce. IM: the slow way to have a quick chat. The Australian. 29 March 2005: C02.

(3) Feng, Jinjuan, Lazar, Jonathan, and Jenny Preece. Empathy and online interpersonal trust: A fragile relationship. Behavior and Information Technology. 23.2 (2004): 97-106.

One September 1, 2003, Danah Boyd*, in her blog, Connected Selves, (1) finally pinned a term that many have been itching to describe about a certain type of person. Theyre those who obsessively add friends to their Friendster profile. To Danah and many others who raise a curious eyebrow at this act, these people are Friendster whores. This type, along with many other peculiar actors and actions of online communities, has become an area of much needed study in online interaction. As the number of people joining social networks increases, as the sheer number of social networks increases, and as the amount of time people spend online interacting increases, ones online identity takes on an important and influential aspect in a ones life.

Recent studies on the growth of online communities have countered previous studies that found the Internet as a stimulus for isolation. In fact, in the Homenet study by Kraul, et al. (2), the more time an individual spends online, the more time he or she spends interacting with others in face-to-face context. Other surveys found that those who are online and interacting would be more likely to induce or maintain relationships by calling friends and family on the phone or meeting up face to face. Howard et al. found that the Internet allows people to stay in touch with family and friends and, in many cases, extend their social networks. (3) While these positive results indicate that the number of people we are interacting with and the frequency with which that interaction occurs is increasing, these surveys stop short of studying the quality and depth of such social networks. Further, they fail to take into account how the public nature of these online networks affects our online interaction.

Friendster catapulted in 2002 as an online dating service. The motivation was that one would more likely date with friends of friends rather than strangers. The site was mostly spread by word of mouth, and by January 2004, more than 5 million people were registered on Friendster. While many joined for dating, the nature of Friendsters publicly articulated network (4) invited those who had no interest in dating to join because of Friendsters underlying feature: they gave you a snapshot into the lives and interests of your friends, your friends-of-friends, your friends-of-friends-of-friends, and so on. Because the network allowed you to see who your friends are friends with, you could consequently be able to equate the status of your friends based on those friendships. As a result of Friendsters success, similar networks sprouted online, including Tribe, Orkut, and thefacebook, which mimic Friendsters basic features (such as adding friends to ones profile).

From a birds eye view, there is nothing particularly interactive about Friendster. Each profile consists of ones interests, a small testimonial for friends to leave notes, and the individuals set of friends. But what makes these social networks successful is the underlying status that one displays because of its public nature. Simply put, the more friends you have, the more popular you are. Its not much different from standing with the popular high school clique during lunch break. While Friendsters services appeal to people beyond the high school years, its attraction is nevertheless often based on that. The Friendster whores, therefore, are nothing more than the popular-wannabe-addicts of all ages.

Then what worth is there to networks such as Friendster? Sadly, not much. In fact, Danah Boyd pinpoints a particular problem in such network technology: online networks confuse the term friends with friends in real life. Friends for Friendster is a binary term. (4) When adding a friend to ones list, the receiver must essentially ask, Are you my friend? Yes or No? This significantly reduces the non-binary value that we put in our friends in real life. And because social networks make no distinction between the implicit online definition of friends from what it is in real life, it can easily mislead younger individuals such as adolescents into understanding the worth (or lack of wroth) of friendships. Another online network, Orkut**, changed this system by forcing the user to determine the status of the friend as acquaintance, friend, good friend, best friend, or havent met. This might seem like a quick fix, but its even more disturbing that one must specify the value of ones friendships.

Its clear that Friendster and the like either 1) have no intention of creating community with their networks because of the debased value friends have online, or 2) have no capability in their networking technology to create and maintain lasting relationships. What then, do we ask, is the value of Friendster and its clones? Further, how does it affect lives?

McKenna & Bargh (6) found that stigmatized social identities are motivated to join and participate in Internet groups devoted to that identity, because of the relative anonymity and thus safety of Internet (compared to face-to-face) participation and the scarcity of such groups in real life. Being connected to people worldwide who share certain beliefs or stigmatized identities assuages the isolation one may feel in day to day life because of such beliefs or characteristics. For such individuals, psychological research finds that joining such a group may transform one to accept his or her identity and give the him or her the confidence to share this repressed identity with others in real life. Studies have shown that the transformational power of such Internet groups have helped stigmatized individuals come out to their family and friends, despite any possible repercussions. Not surprisingly, the most popular groups in Friendster and Tribe.net have been groups such as gays and lesbians.

Such social networks, therefore, are conducive to group formation, group identity formation, and consequently, individual identity formation. This trend, however, is localized only to those stigmatized individuals and those in need of support such as cancer sufferers. Broadly speaking, social networks have been conducive to identity formation, or the least, identity definition. Friendsters profile, like others, are short and cap text (2000 characters maximum for About Me). They ask for ones interests, favorite movies and books. (7) Therefore, one is forced to be as definitive as possible in this space of self-expression. And since the information is public, status can come into play that compels one to write for the public, instead of for oneself.

Social online networks, with their distinct online meaning of friends and inherently public nature of individuals, both significantly deviates from real life relationships and often compels one to define, and in specific cases, transform, ones identity. At face value, the Friendsters may appear as fun and interesting sites to join and check out friends and friends-of-friends. But implicit in such networks are nuanced features that define and possibly change status and identity.

References:
* Danah Boyd is a Phd student at the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California, Berkeley. She studies digital identities in computer mediated social contexts. She is at http://www.danah.org.

(1) Friendster Slut. http://friendsterslut.blogspot.com/. 2 June 2005

(2) Kraut R, Patterson M, Lundmark V, Kiesler S, Mukopadhyay T, et al. 1998. Internet paradox: a social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being? Am. Psychol. 53:1017-31

(3) Howard PEN, Rainie L, Jones S. 2001. Days and nights on the Internet. Am.Behav. Sci. 45: 383-404

(4) Boyd, Danah. Friendster and Public Articulated Social Networks. Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems (CHI 2004). Vienna: ACM, April 24-29, 2004.

** Orkut, in fact, has entirely deviated from any notion of meaningful friendships. On its homepage, it sells itself by asking, Who do YOU know? implying that your status is tied to the people youre friends with. In ones profile, one of its features specifically asks you to rank you friends!

(5) orkut. http://www.orkut.com/. 2 June 2005

(6) McKenna KYA, Green AS, Gleason MJ. 2002. Relationship formation on the Internet: What's the big attraction? J. Soc. Issues 58(1):9-31

(7) Friendster. http://www.friendster.com/ 2 June 2005

With the explosion of online dating services, never before has it been easier to seek out and communicate with the types of people one would like to get to know better. These dating services allow the user to post profiles of themselves describing their interests and what they are looking for, and to browse other people with the same interests and goals. A well-written profile, complete with a nice picture, can attract some dozen or so responses a day. (1)

More interactively-minded people can go into chatrooms or engage in instant messaging with people they contact through online dating services. There, the conversation can be easier and more relaxed, partly because there is not the added stress of meeting face to face, and partly because the couple already knows something about the othermore so than, say, two random people meeting on the street will know about each other.

Internet dating services makes dating more convenient by providing access to millions of people at the click of a button. It is also in many ways more secure than traditional datingone does not have to reveal anything one doesnt want to, and emails and casual conversations allow one to get to know the other person a lot better than, say, a conversation at a bar would. Sometimes the couple is content to keep the relationship online, but other times, they decide to meet face to face. Often the next step is calling each other over the phone. Many couples report that the first phone call often feels like talking to an old friend, because they already know the other person so well. (1)

The Internet also makes communicating in an existing relationship easier. As a case in point, Stephanie Rybicki and her boyfriend Arthur were in a long-distance relationship while apart at separate colleges for 4 years. During much of this time, they corresponded primarily by talking on the phone and by email. Now, they are engaged and have been united, although they engaged in long-distance wedding planning! Stephanie gives good advice for anyone who is attempting a LDR: have trust, and be honest. And do not underestimate how important email can be. In long-distance relationships (LDR), communication is a crucial element, but it doesnt have to be expensive or time-consuming. Often, a simple message once a day or chatting over instant messenger is enough to keep the relationship healthy over many years. (2) The Internet is excellent at providing casual, quick, inexpensive ways to keep in contact, such as with instant messaging or email.

Despite the benefits of dating online, one must keep in mind that it is not a replacement for face to face meeting. It is hard to verify how much of communication is nonverbal, but estimates range from 65% to 93%. (3) The nonverbal portion of human communication is made up not of words but of body language, tone of voice, expressions, or context. Because computer mediated communication, or CMC, severely limits if not completely eliminates nonverbal communication, the sender cannot easily express nuances of emotion and feeling that are usually registered through emotional channels. Because CMC lacks audio and video cues, the message can be seen as impersonal and lack socio-emotional content; however, given time, the same information can be transmitted and the same depth of relationship can be achieved. (4) It simply takes longer. Thus the Internet may seem to be facilitating communication at first by making communication fast and efficient, but it makes up for this advantage by decreasing the amount of information that can be transmitted in a single session.

The anonymity of online communication can be a double-edged sword. Because communicating online allows one to never show ones face and or give out any personal information, it can encourage people to act differently in online interactions than they would in face to face communication. This can have a positive effect, for example when it allows shy, sensitive people to be more open, but it can also encourage lying about oneself in order to live out a fantasy or simply to enjoy the benefits of being someone else for a short amount of time without any real-world repercussions. According to research done by Dr. David Greenfield, founder of the Center for Internet Studies and author of Virtual Addiction, as much as 50% of internet users admit to lying online, usually about physical traits. (5)

Even assuming that both parties are telling the truth, it is sometimes easier to misjudge the other person when the only point of contact is words on a screen. Because what one types in essence becomes who one is, it is extremely tempting to only present those qualities of oneself that one believes to be favorable. The recipient of these messages, therefore, is more likely judge their communicative partners on limited information. These participants may not realize the negative attributes of the other; instead, they opt to judge the other as the "perfect person" and project an idealized image onto the other person. In the absence of the cues that are present in face to face contact, even meager clues such as spelling and punctuation choices can make a significant impact on how one is perceived in an online context, although they are poor indicators of personality or emotion. (4) Thus, even if the other person is not purposefully being misleading, sometimes the very medium itself lends itself to distortion of information.

Ultimately the Internet is a cornucopia of rare or forbidden delights, a place where one can literally find anything, anytime---and the freedom can be exhilarating. But CAVEAT EMPTOR still applies. While it is true that the Internet allows people to find a greater variety of potential love interests with more ease and convenience, ultimately, as in real life, the burden is placed on the individual to uncover if the object of ones affection is, indeed, the real deal. Ultimately, it is still about trust. And the Internet can only marginally help and may even hinder the process of learning to trust one's fellow man.

References:
(1) Internet Relationships. Romancepedia.com. 27 May 2005. http://www.romanceopedia.com/indexInternet.html

(2) Rybicki, Stephanie. Long Distance Relationships. Home page. 27 May 2005.
http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/s/a/sar242/ldr.html

(3) Givens, David B. Non-Verbal Communication. Center for NonVerbal Studies. 05 June 2005. http://members.aol.com/nonverbal2/nvcom.htm

(4) McQuillen, Jeffrey S. The influence of technology on the initiation of interpersonal relationships. Education, 123 i3 (2003): 616-618.

(5) Drach, Mike. Sex, Lies, and Digital Dates. DigitalJournal.com 15 July 2004. 04 June 2005. http://www.digitaljournal.com/print.htm?id=3955