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Maybe we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief now.

Back in 2006, a study done by the American Sociological Association argued that since 1985, people in America have become more socially isolated, and that the diversity of their social networks was getting smaller too.

The study suggested that perhaps new technologies like the internet were playing a part. Since then, the results of this study have been used countless times to further the argument that the internet and social media aren’t doing good things for our social skills.

But a new study just released by Pew Internet Research has found something pretty different. In fact, they claim that:

Americans are not as isolated as has been previously reported. People’s use of the mobile phone and the internet is associated with larger and more diverse discussion networks. And, when we examine people’s full personal network — their strong and weak ties — internet use in general, and use of social networking services such as Facebook in particular, are associated with more diverse social networks.

The entire report is pretty lengthy, but Pew has a great summary here.

This entry was posted on 11/10/2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under culture, technology . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.