Image: Michael Cerasoli

Internet Access at Home Increases the Likelihood that Adults Will Be in Relationships . Internet is especially important for bringing together same-sex couples, and may soon replace friends as the prime way all Americans meet their romantic partners.

Adults who have Internet access at home are much more likely to be in romantic relationships than adults without Internet access, according to research to be presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

“Although prior research on the social impacts of Internet use has been rather ambiguous about the social cost of time spent online, our research suggests that Internet access has an important role to play in helping Americans find mates,” said Michael J. Rosenfeld, an associate professor of sociology at Stanford University and the lead author of the study, “Meeting Online: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary.” [continue reading…]

Yesterday’s NYT Mind over Mass Media – Steven Pinker does a great job of addressing the debate that the internet has a negative effect on cognitive functioning.

Yes, the constant arrival of information packets can be distracting or addictive, especially to people with attention deficit disorder. But distraction is not a new phenomenon. The solution is not to bemoan technology but to develop strategies of self-control, as we do with every other temptation in life. Turn off e-mail or Twitter when you work, put away your Blackberry at dinner time, ask your spouse to call you to bed at a designated hour.
And to encourage intellectual depth, don’t rail at PowerPoint or Google. It’s not as if habits of deep reflection, thorough research and rigorous reasoning ever came naturally to people. They must be acquired in special institutions, which we call universities, and maintained with constant upkeep, which we call analysis, criticism and debate. They are not granted by propping a heavy encyclopedia on your lap, nor are they taken away by efficient access to information on the Internet. continue reading

Source: New York Times

It’s empowering sometimes, to take control of your own health, or parenting, or what not, with a few keystrokes. Other times, though, it can make you insane. Lisa Belkin on When Parents Know Too Much

When my son had some funky test results after a medical check-up last year, his doctor’s first advice to me was “don’t Google it.” I did anyway, of course, and he was right. Googling was a bad idea.
We live in a time when all information is literally at our fingertips, but we don’t always know how to filter it. It’s empowering sometimes, to take control of your own health or parenting or what not with a few keystrokes. Other times, though, it can make you insane.
Jennifer Gruden met her husband online nearly 20 years ago. She earns her living online, as a Web editor for More.ca, the Web site for Canada’s version of More magazine. An expatriate New Yorker who now lives in Toronto, she could not imagine life without her computer. On the other hand, she explains in a guest post today, it is not always her friend. Read More