---
title: 'Not a Loser, Thank You Very Much'
date: '2006-01-30T21:07:00-05:00'
permalink: /not-a-loser-thank-you-very-much/
tags:
    - blogging
    - 'social software'
---

Via [unrequited narcissism](http://www.zunta.org/blog/archives/2006/01/30/suck_it_friendl/), the [affirmation](http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/13746169.htm) I’ve been waiting for:

> The cyberworld expands people’s social networks and even encourages people to talk by phone or meet others in person, a new study finds.
> 
> The Pew Internet and American Life Project also finds that U.S. Internet users are more apt to get help on health care, financial and other decisions because they have a larger set of people to whom they can turn.
> 
> Further rebuking early studies suggesting that the Internet promotes isolation, Pew found that it “was actually helping people maintain their communities,” said Barry Wellman, a University of Toronto sociology professor and co-author of the Pew report.
> 
> The study found that e-mail is supplementing, not replacing, other means of contact. For example, people who e-mail most of their closest friends and relatives at least once a week are about 25 percent more likely to have weekly landline phone contact as well. The increase is even greater for cell phones.
> 
> “There’s a certain seamlessness of how people maintain their social networks,” said John Horrigan, Pew’s associate director. “They shift between face-to-face, phone and Internet quite easily.”
> 
> Meanwhile, Internet users tend to have a larger network of close and significant contacts — a median of 37 compared with 30 for non-users — and they are more likely to receive help from someone within that social network.

A nice thing to read after a full day of meetings, a drink with a former advisor, and dinner with my sister. Except for the part about the telephone — don’t get me started on how much I hate the telephone — I’d say eat that, luddite naysayers.