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Wired News : Study: Humans Do <cite>Many</cite> Things




A note from Paul Jones:

   What a wonderful response to a very silly study from Stanford. The Stanford study, which has been widely but not wisely cited all over, claims that people who are on the net a *whole lot* aren't doing too much else. The study ignores that the number of hours in the day still only add up to 24...

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 From Wired News, available online at:
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,34387,00.html

Study: Humans Do Many Things  
by Jon Rochmis  

12:15 p.m. 16.Feb.2000 PST 
An obscure university study, but a study nonetheless, reveals that
Americans who have dogs spend the time with their dogs instead of said
time watching TV, visiting with friends, sleeping, going to movies,
surfing the Internet, and doing nothing.  

They walk their dogs, play with them, train them, speak gibberish to
them, comparison-shop for dog food, and read up on them to the point
that it detracts from actually interacting with other human beings,
obscure researchers have concluded.  

Learn more in Making the Grade
Discover more Net Culture 

This study, conducted by the Stanley Lotus Institute of Farming, comes
fresh on the heels of an equally shocking study conducted by Stanford
University and published by fine journals everywhere. That study
indicates that Web time takes away from social time.  

"These studies are changing my life," said Rob R. Barron, one of the
Lotus researchers. "The only unfortunate thing about conducting these
studies is that it consumes so much of my time and the time of my many
student researchers that they are unable to watch TV, be with friends,
go to movies, surf the Internet, walk their dogs, or do nothing.  

"But I must say that the Stanford study so astonished us that we
needed to research this equally important issue. Time spent away from
other human beings and doing other things is not in the best interests
of conducting further research into these matters."  

Stanford's groundbreaking, time-exhaustive, and unquestionably
expensive study even produced this graph illustrating the point.  

The Stanford study showed that the longer people have been on the
Internet, the more they use it.  

"Can you believe that?" Barron said.  

A full 25 percent of regular Internet users (that is, they are "logged
on" more than a whopping five hours a week) admit that those are five
fewer hours than they spend with friends and family, or attending
events outside the home.  

"So many people, just wasting their days, not interacting with their
fellow human," Barron lamented.  

"I was so despondent after reading that study that I had to take a
walk which, as you can imagine, I rarely do anymore because I spend,
oh, a good six hours a week on the Internet. And as I was walking, I
noticed many other people walking ... with dogs!  

"That was the inspiration for my research."  

Barron's research was conducted among 4,113 adults in 2,689 households
-- or "dogholds," as he likes to call them. He found that 25 percent
of the respondents know more about their dogs than they do about their
neighbors' backgrounds, 48 percent sleep with their dogs in their beds
instead of another human, and a full 92 percent go on the Internet
specifically to interact with other dog owners.  

"An entire segment of our society fully finds their dogs more
interesting than other humans," Barron said. "What is it that humans
can't that dogs do?"   

Related Wired Links:  

'Andy Lives!' Yeah, Yeah, Yeah  
22.Dec.1999 

The Argument of the Century  
29.Nov.1999 

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