Blog 4 - Design That Matters I
First off, thank you to Professor Resner for taking the time to give a lecture and opening up last Monday. I really appreciated hearing his views on design and the pressing questions that he encouraged us to think about.
One idea that came up was the question of how society has been affected by the rise of the internet. Overall, it seems that many people would agree that the internet has created both some serious harms and an enormous potential for good, and for this blog post, I would like to focus on the specific effects that social media has had on community--both good and bad.
An interesting albeit old study from 2005 examined the impact of internet access on various metrics such as community engagement and community satisfaction. The study found that greater access to the internet correlated with higher community engagement and satisfaction, one reason being that further resources introduced more opportunities for community access. Critically, the paper emphasizes that high community satisfaction is related to positive psychological well being, and as such, a conclusion of the study was that it would be important to bridge the gap in access to the internet in the information age. However, reviewing this article in 2023, the dynamic of both the online world and access to it have changed drastically, and it is likely that these changes have introduced some complexity and nuance to the situation.
With large social media platforms and increased access to the internet (in the limited scope of the United States, where now it is almost expected for most people to at least have a smartphone), people who are far apart can connect more easily than ever. Whether it is family members overseas keeping contact with each other or a lonely teenager finding people they can connect with elsewhere via hobbies or shared experience, there are many amazing opportunities to find community that have been made possible by the internet. However, there has also been an opposite trend recently in that some people feel there has been an erosion of traditional community. In the past, without the internet, people had a stronger need to build connections with their local community, be it neighbors, local clubs, etc. Now, more and more people are spending an increased amount of time indoors and specifically online. One article states that 90% of Americans spend around 22 hours per day indoors, and interestingly, the majority of people tended to drastically underestimate how much time they are actually spending indoors. Apart from possible physical detriments, spending a large amount of time indoors can sometimes correlate with mental health concerns as well, which almost tells a story that is the complete opposite of that of the 2005 study.
Overall, the impact of the internet is multilayered and complex, but it also intriguing to consider how the internet itself is changing over time; likewise, the way we interact with and are impacted by the information age also changes. While there is enormous potential with the online world for new previously impossible communities to be formed, there is something to be said about maintaining a connection with those we might interact with outside of the internet on a day-to-day basis; after all, the importance of in-person interactions is in no way a new concept and one that has become increasingly relevant in the aftermath of COVID-19. Nonetheless, this is a completely complicated issue to understand, let alone address, but I wonder how awareness in design might be leveraged to encourage better trends of internet engagement.
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