Yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a new set of rules regarding how Internet service provides (ISPs) must treat the data they transfer to individual Internet users.  The rules have been pitched as a compromise between the interests of two industries: On the one hand, content providers like Google, Facebook, or Amazon tend to favor the concept of “net neutrality,” which holds that all types of data should be transferred at the same speed and, ostensibly, creates an even playing field where start-ups can compete with industry titans.  On the other hand, ISPs like Verizon and Comcast want to charge for a “fast lane” that would bring content to consumers more rapidly from some (paying) sites than from other (non-paying) sites.  (A more extreme possibility is that ISPs would completely block certain sites that do not pay a fee).

The crux of compromise is that the new net neutrality rules will only apply to wired connections, leaving mobile connections virtually unregulated. According to the New York Times:

They ban any outright blocking and any “unreasonable discrimination” of Web sites or applications by fixed-line broadband providers […] They require all providers [including mobile] to disclose what steps they take to manage their networks [but] the rules do not explicitly forbid “paid prioritization,” which would allow a company to pay for faster transmission of data.

How these new rules will effect consumers is still being debated, but, thus far, virtually no attention has been paid to the fact that various demographic groups use the Internet differently and, thus, are likely to be affected differentially by the new rules.  These differences are most acute along racial lines.  According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, blacks and Hispanics are significantly more likely than whites to access the Internet via mobile phones (see chart for details).

Likely due to high costs and poor service in many areas, black and Hispanics have been slow to adopt dial-up and broadband connections at home.  Thus, mobile phones have become the primary way – or even the only way – that many blacks and Hispanics connect to the Internet.

Because wired (including WiFi) and mobile access to the Internet break down along racial lines, the unintended consequences of the new FCC ruling is to preserve net neutrality for white users, while allowing ISPs to provide discriminatory service to black and Hispanic users.  Moreover, Web-based entrepreneurs catering to black and Hispanic populations are going to face disproportionately more pressure to pay ISPs for upgraded service, because their target customer-base will not be protected by net neutrality.

This ruling demonstrates that being “color-blind,”while not racist in intent, is, nevertheless, often racist in its consequences.

We frequently discuss how young people (i.e., “digital natives”) use technology on the Cyborgology blog.  Today, I have compiled and interesting graph illustrating the age at which today’s minors got their first cell phone.

More data  on this topic is available at the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The way in which information is shared in the digital age is headlining the news around many different issues. WikiLeaks is distributing thousands of classified State Department documents; the FFC Chairman is attempting to preserve net neutrality (i.e., the dictum that Internet service providers cannot limit the rate that users access different kinds of legal content); Facebook users are sharing more and more private details of their lives online.  Arguably, the same cultural debate is playing out in all of these cases: Is society best served when all information is free, or are we better off if some information remains private?

Silicon Valley has become a magnet for evangelists of the “information wants to be free” movement, what has come to be known as “cyberlibertarianism.”  Supporters often argue that the free flow of information is fundamental to democracy.  This is, in fact, the justification behind WikiLeaks’ distribution of confidential, proprietary, or otherwise secret information.

However, it is important to note that many of the most high-profile supporters of a transparent society, where information is free, are Internet companies, like Facebook and Google, that seek profit by collecting and sharing information about their users. Alternatively, companies who would benefit from restricting the flow of information (ISPs like, Comcast and Verizon) tend to oppose the principle that information should be free.

Cyberlibertarianism has range of other critics.  Clearly, the government has argued that state interests are threatened by the leaking of information. On a more micro level, many sociologists (including the authors of this post) are concerned that the pressure to constantly share more, and more personal information can be detrimental to individual users of Google, Facebook, and other social-networking sites.

Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, has stated,

Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.

And, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has stated,

If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

Building a culture where openness is prized creates problems particularly acute for members of groups that fall outside of society’s privileged categories (e.g., non-whites, women, LGBT persons, or those with disabilities). For instance, earlier this year Facebook made one’s friend-list and “likes” public overnight, effectively “outing” many users who wanted to keep their sexual orientation more private.  As one blogger discussed, Google’s decision to make public information about those with whom you email most (in their Buzz service) was especially harmful to a woman with an abusive ex-husband.  Similarly, danah boyd, in a blog post titled “Transparency Is Not Enough,” describes the potentially harmful consequences of “open government” when  sex offender information is misused.

Against the notion of “information wants to be free” as a universal good, we should also consider the continuing importance of secrecy, especially for those most vulnerable.

Previously, I have discussed how Internet (particularly online dating) varies with age.  Today, I want to take a slight different tact and consider Internet use as a generational phenomenon.

These data, no doubt, confirm expectations that Internet usage is less common in older generations; however, the severity of the drop in Internet use across generational groups is greater than virtually any other category, including gender, race, and class.   The generation gap still constitutes the greatest digital divide in America.

For more trend data see Pew’s “Generation Difference in Online Activities.”

Last week, Wiley-Blackwell held an online conference, entitled: Wellbeing: A Cure-all for the Social Sciences? I was an invited respondent for a paper that might be of  interest to Cyborgology readers called, “Internet Technology and Social Capital: How the Internet Affects Seniors’ Social Capital and Wellbeing.”  Below, I have reproduced my summary and comments:

Authors:

Shima Sum, Mark. R. Mathews, Mohsen Pourghasem, Ian Hughes

Summary:

The paper tackles three socially important and interrelated questions:

1. What is the relationship between social capital and wellbeing among older people?
2. What is the relationship between Internet use and social capital in older people?
3. What is the direct and indirect relationship between Internet use an wellbeing among older people?

Survey data was gathered from a sample of Australian seniors on frequency of Internet use, type of Internet use, social capital, and well-being indicators.

Most broadly, the study finds that use of the Internet for a greater breadth of purposes was positively associated with general social capital, though there was diminishing return on this effect. However, when focusing on subcategories of Internet usage, social capital, a more nuanced set of relationships emerge. The paper finds that two specific sub-categories of social capital, feelings of trust and value of life, are predictors of personal well-being. It also finds that two specific sub-categories of social capital, work and family connections, are predictors of national well-being. Of the various dimensions of social capital, participation in community was predicted by using the Internet to communicate with unknown people; feeling of trust and neighborhood connection were predicted by using the Internet for communication; family connections were predicted by history of Internet use; value of life was predicted by using the Internet for communication and by frequency of Internet use; and work connections were predicted by a lower degree of using the Internet for entertainment. Regarding the direct relationship between Internet use and well-being, usage of the Internet to find new people and for entertainment purposes were each negatively associated with personal wellbeing, while frequency of Internet use was negatively associated with national well-being. The authors theorize that use of the Internet for entertainment makes people less proactive and displaces more social behaviors. Such activity is also believed to displace attention to the local with attention to the global.

Comments:

As Huang (2010) recently demonstrated, the relationship between well-being and Internet use has been widely studied, yet findings are conflicting and require further nuance. This paper makes a major contribution to literature, first and foremost, because of its sophisticated typology of both various subcategories of Internet use and various subcategories of social capital. This demonstrates that the literature has development substantially from the early, agenda-setting “Internet Paradox: A Social Technology that Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-Being?” study, which examined well-being in relation to Internet adoption (Kraut et al., 1998). We learn from the authors of the present paper that the question, “How is Internet use related to well-being?”, is misleading, since there are myriad ways to use the Internet, and these various uses effect well-being differentially. It would be interesting to see if these findings can be replicated in future research for other indicators of well-being (e.g., depression, self-esteem, etc.), since well-being is also multidimensional.

The authors find that use of the Internet for entertainment and to meet new people has a negative association with personal well-being. They theorize that this might be a product of the displacement of certain well-being promoting behaviors by behaviors that are less-effective at promoting well-being. It would be interesting to consider whether causality could be operating in the opposite direction, especially considering that displacement theory has been contested (e.g., Wellman, 2001). The fact that, in the present sample, the least common use of the Internet is meeting new people implies that, insofar people are socializing on the Internet, they are augmenting their existing social ties. Additionally, while it is possible that entertainment uses are displacing more social behaviors, it is also possible that people who have less social capital – perhaps, because they are less mobile or have outlived their much of their social networks – are predisposed to spend more time pursuing entertainment (both online and offline).

This paper certainly helps to focus the discussion on (various types of) Internet use and well-being. I look forward to the discussion it precipitates.

References:

Huang, C., 2010. Internet Use and Psychological Well-being: A Meta-Analysis. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 10(2).

Kraut, R., Patterson, M. et al., 1998. Internet Paradox: A Social Technology that Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-Being? American psychologist, 53, 1017-1031.

Wellman, B. et al., 2001. Does the Internet Increase, Decrease, or Supplement
Social Capital. American Behavioral Scientist, 45(3), 436-455.

Facebook and other social-networking sites subsist on information, though not just any information. These sites have an insatiable appetite for the intimate details of their users’ lives. In fact, your personal information is a sine qua non for social-networking sites on two levels: 1.) People, primarily, use the Web to learn about the people and things they care about (like you). 2.) The same information that draws people to your profile, is useful in targeting advertisements to both you and your visitors.

Because these sites feed on personal information, they develop strategies to elicit such information from users.  For example, you may have to register and build a profile before accessing content.  The result as a sort of pay-to-play system where information is the common currency.  And, in order for this information economy to grow and intensify, it must continuously solicit new information and make more of the existing content public.

This trend toward more and more public information has been an iterative process with small changes occurring every few months or so.  From the perspective of the user, the pressures to make updates are generally subtle.  In fact, we are often not consulted in the process.  Information is added to your public profile through automated posting (e.g., Facebook connect) and through changes in default settings.  The whole process merely requires our acquiescence.  In return, we are able to freely access the range of social-networking services offered by these sites.

One could argue that everyone benefits from this arrangement; however, we must also look at the net effect of all this information-sharing to society as a whole.  The advent of social media has lead to what I am a labeling a culture of hyper-visibility.  The problem is that the effects of such visibility are not neutral to the various subgroups within society.  Instead, the way that the culture hyper-visibility impacts you is largely determined by where you stand at the intersection of socially important categories such as sexual orientation, dis/ability gender, race, and class.  (See, for example, a recent discussion by Nathan Jurgenson about how visibility plays out differently for men and women in the field of politics.)

We must begin to consider, more publicly, who is advantage and who is disadvantaged in this environment, because, while we may be enjoying the fruit of new social technologies, it may also be a sort of Faustian bargain whereby we allow so-called “technological progress” to simply reproduce the inequalities of the past.

We’re not living fully in our lives.  We’re living a little bit in our lives and a little bit in our Facebook lives.

Sherry Turkle has never failed to be a provocative and insightful theorist of human-technology interaction, but on this point, I could not disagree more.  Unfortunately, Turkle continues to reify the false dichotomy between the digital and material worlds.  We are NOT half in the digital and half in the virtual world.  Instead, we are all fully immersed into an augmented reality.

Moreover, I would argue that Second Life has become red herring in the digital/material debate.  Most Internet users don’t even know what Second Life is.  The paradigmatic example of online-offline interaction, at this historical moment, is Facebook, particularly Facebook mobile apps.

In any case, you can read the interview here and judge for yourself.

Rather than compiling my own charts this week, I have gathered a number of figures created by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that address in the US.  This first chart shows that it was only in 2008 that 50% of adults in America first had broadband access at home.  These data might not be the best representation of access, however, because we know that many people, particularly blacks and Hispanics, are accessing the Internet through mobile devices and may be living in urban environments where public wifi is ubiquitous (see next chart).

As the next chart illustrates, nearly 80% of American adults now access the Internet.  Access rates topped 50% in 2000.  People who became teenagers after this point are often referred to as “digital natives” as opposed to “digital migrants” (for more info, see: “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants,” by Marc Prensky).

Young people use the Internet at vastly higher rates than seniors.  Over 90% of Americans ages 12-29 use the Internet.

Finally, I will leave you with an overall summary of the demographics of Facebook users.

This wonderful infographic was published last year in The Visual Miscellaneum, and has recently been posted online.  I thought the Cyborgology readers might appreciate a link.

Here’s an interesting interview with Alice Marwick about how the “long tail” of the Internet the has reconstituted fame as a localized or “micro” phenomenon.

Contrary to the point made by Marwick, I think the important question is not whether will we get fifteen minutes of fame nor whether we will be famous to fifteen people, but whether we can have (or even desire) fifteen minutes of privacy.