Telephones, TV and the Internet: The Impact Information Technology in the Home Has on Social Involvement and Psychological Well-Being

这项研究调查了家用电脑和互联网如何改变美国家庭的社会和心理健康，并将这些新技术对家庭的影响与旧技术--电话和电视--进行了比较。本研究的目的是：（1）确定早期的研究结果是否表明，使用互联网会降低心理和社会幸福感，这一结果在样本、互联网服务和时间上具有普遍性;（2）确定这些影响的机制;（3）比较不同家庭信息技术使用模式的影响。数据将来自一个全国性的三波小组调查，允许人们研究人们在同一时间使用电视、电话、计算机和互联网的数量如何预测他们随后的社会参与和心理健康的变化。 这项调查还将辅以一个准实验，在这个实验中，一部分有电脑但不能上网的受访者将被随机分配免费上网，而不是支付现金来参与调查。研究结果将对有关互联网普及的政策辩论和对社会负责的互联网服务的设计产生影响。

This research examines how household computing and theInternet are changing the social and psychological well being of theAmerican family, and compares the influence of these new technologieson households with that of older ones--telephones andtelevisions. The research objectives are (1) to determine whether theearly results showing that use of the Internet decreases psychologicaland social well being generalizes across samples, Internet services, andtime, (2) to identify mechanism for these effects, and (3) to comparethe impact of different patterns of household information technologyuse. Data will come from a national three-wave, panel survey, allowing oneto examine how the amount of television, telephone, computing, andInternet people use at one time predict later changes in their socialinvolvement and psychological well being at a subsequent time. Thesurvey will be supplemented with a quasi-experiment, in which a subsampleof respondents who have computers but no Internet access will berandomly assigned free Internet access instead of a cash payments toparticipate in the survey. Results will have implications both foremerging policy debate about universal access to the Internet and forthe design of socially responsible Internet services.