MOMMARAMA

News Flash!

It's all over the news! Hold on to your hats!

"The more hours people use the Internet, the less time they spend with real human beings."

How's THAT for an "A-HA!" moment? Who funded THIS study? The "Center for Using Up Major Funds to Prove What Any Moron Already Knows?"

I'm thinking this could technically hold, not just for computer users, but for people who BATHE, as well. I mean, if they weren't in their bathrooms tending to issues of grooming, they'd be out and about interacting with people, right? Shame on you clean people!

… Too much time on the Internet makes people reclusive and less likely to interact with people face to face...

Well, no kidding. But that's a pretty big assumption: that what we WANT is people in our faces. Speaking for myself, if I can buy a shirt with 3 clicks rather than deal with a rude, or possibly camouflaged sales person of dubious ancestry, who can't figure out how to operate a cash register, you BET I'm going to go the impersonal route.

Just this morning, driving across town, I was aggressively tailgated by what appeared to be a 12-year-old chain smoking, gesticulating female in a red pinto, with a Yahoo Serious hairdo. (The girl had the hairdo, not the car.)

I can tell you, I wouldn't want to be interacting face to face with this lunatic, without a 3-inch thick plexi-glass wall. I work with people, and I work with computers, and I can tell you this: when it comes to hassles and headaches, the two are nearly perfectly matched.

One of the things that killed me about this particular gem of scientific sleuthing was that in order to conduct the survey, the researchers apparently provided FREE web-TV and Internet access to the subjects. And were subsequently SHOCKED, it seems, that their freebies got used.

Well, DUH.

If I got a free Mazerati for a month, in exchange for taking some silly survey, you can pretty much bet your tukus that I'd be putting the miles on faster than Ferris Beuller. Which would probably mean I spent less time interacting with people face-to-face (including, possibly, the woman in the red pinto.) Darn the luck.

About one-third said they were online five or more hours per week.
Of those people, 13 percent said they spent less time with family and friends.

And of those subjects who spent 5+ hours/week on the Internet, and who DIDN'T spend less time with family and friends - I'd like to know how they managed it. Where'd they get those hours back? Last time I checked, *time was pretty much a constant in our lives, and not conveniently adjustable based on our personal needs, or computer usage. Maybe they all live in Bermuda.

[Using] e-mail in place of face-to-face human interaction is a dangerous social dynamic.
Many frequent users of e-mail and chat groups tend to seek out only like-minded individuals.

As opposed to, say, the socioeconomic mixing pot that is our society today? How DARE we fill opera houses with opera lovers! Imagine the gall, forming any kind of club or association. Why, we even have AGE to segregate ourselves! And that man/woman thing? I'm not even going to GO there.

``There's a difference between conversing and connecting…We're losing the tolerance for diversity.''

I rather think the opposite. I think diversity is being embraced. Admittedly, I have butt-cheek marks worn into my computer chair, so I may not be the most objective witness. But how else could thousands of people read this very opinion (for what it's worth) TODAY, from nearly any corner of the planet? I rather think that "diversity" is taking on a whole new meaning, and being incorporated into our lives like never before.

As for the problem with conversing versus connecting, welcome to the world. They can't pin this one on computers. This has been an issue since God told Adam to keep his grubbies off the apples. God was talking to a brick wall, even before there was such a thing as bricks.

For better or worse, it seems that our "brick walls" at least have Windows.