Cyber-connecting into community

By Tom Long
Detroit News

A computer is Damon Page's window to the world The 31-year-old Detroit resident and quadriplegic does his banking online, visits comic book and music sites on the Internet and keeps in touch with his far-flung family by e-mail.

"My brother lives in Seattle, my sister is in North Dakota, my other sister lives in California," Page says. The computer "keeps us together," he notes.

In the home technology boom that has transformed America's way of life over the past 25 years, the computer is a breakthrough with the ability to foster social interaction.

While cable television, DVD players, video games, VCRs and other distractions have pulled some people away from community and family activities over the years, computers offer more potential for people to connect.

But computers also allow people to cloak their real identities. Computers can become as addicting and distracting as television. Computers give kids the opportunity to download all manner of illegal and questionable material.

"Computers are wonderful in terms of building a national or international community," says Steven Abell, chairman of the psychology department at University of Detroit Mercy. "But the more time we spend doing that, it can weaken and break down the local community, and the nexus of that is the family."

Sixty-four percent of U.S. households are now connected to the Internet, up from only 25 percent five years ago, according to Forrester Research, which tracks industry trends.

Of the Internet services, America Online remains the largest, with 25 million subscribers in the United States.

AOL estimates that its members send more than a billion instant messages a day. They also receive 350 million to 500 million e-mails daily, and more than 12 million AOL members enter Internet chat rooms weekly.

According to BuzzBack Market Research, teens now spend significantly more time — between 16 and 17 hours a week — surfing the Internet and sending messages than they do working at a job, doing homework offline, exercising or volunteering.

Still, the Internet has become a way of life, and a way of social interaction for millions, with the potential to stretch many beyond normal geographic boundaries.

"I talk to so many friends of mine online every single day, I probably am more community-oriented now than I was before computers," says Dave Linabury, 39, of Royal Oak, Mich. "I was kind of a loner before."