FOR RELEASE JULY 3, 2018 BY Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie FOR MEDIA OR OTHER INQUIRIES: Janna Anderson, Director, Imagining the Internet Center Lee Rainie, Director, Internet and Technology Research Tom Caiazza, Communications Manager 202.419.4372 www.pewresearch.org RECOMMENDED CITATION Pew Research Center, June, 2018, “Stories From Experts About the Impact of Digital Life” 1 PEW RESEARCH CENTER About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It does not take policy positions. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research. The Center studies U.S. politics and policy; journalism and media; internet, science and technology; religion and public life; Hispanic trends; global attitudes and trends; and U.S. social and demographic trends. All of the center’s reports are available at www.pewresearch.org. Pew Research Center is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder. For this project, Pew Research Center worked with Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center, which helped conceive the research and collect and analyze the data. © Pew Research Center 2018 www.pewresearch.org 2 PEW RESEARCH CENTER Stories From Experts About the Impact of Digital Life Technology experts and scholars have never been at a loss for concerns about the current and future impact of the internet. Over the years of canvassings by Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center, many experts have been anxious about the way people’s online activities can undermine truth, foment distrust, jeopardize individuals’ well-being when it comes to physical and emotional health, enable trolls to weaken democracy and community, compromise human agency as algorithms become embedded in more activities, kill privacy, make institutions less secure, open up larger social divisions as digital divides widen, and wipe out untold numbers of decent- paying jobs. An early-2018 expert canvassing of technology experts, scholars and health specialists on the future of digital life and well-being contained references to some of those concerns. The experts who participated in that research project were also asked to share anecdotes about their own personal experiences with digital life. This report shares those observations. Specifically, the participants in the nonscientific canvassing were asked: Please share a brief personal anecdote about how digital life has changed your daily life, your family’s life or your friends’ lives in regard to well-being – some brief observation about life for self, family or friends. Tell us how this observation or anecdote captures how hyperconnected life changes people’s well-being compared to the way life was before digital connectivity existed. Many of these experts wrote about a number of powerful ways digital life makes things better. Some themes: www.pewresearch.org 3 PEW RESEARCH CENTER Themes about the personal impacts of digital life THE POSITIVES + Glorious Many argued that the internet has provided one of the greatest boons to OF DIGITAL LIFE connectedness individuals: the ability to reach out and connect directly with friends, family, colleagues, knowledge, education, entertainment and more anywhere globally at any time in a nearly free and frictionless manner. + Invent, reinvent, Digital tools enable people to invent or reinvent their lives and careers. They can innovate also innovate through wide networking with people and information that allows them to develop businesses, find the perfect job, and meet soulmates, colleagues, new friends and fellow interest-sharers. + Life-saving advice People can tap into and share medical, safety and health resources and support and assistance at a moment’s notice, which is crucial for personal health and a game-changer for people engaged in child and elder care. + Efficient These experts also hailed the way the internet revolutionizes life logistics and transactions experiences. They cited benefits including accessing online education, researching purchases, finding the best options for anything, making quick-hit social connections, planning trips, or coordinating activities – which allow people to be more mobile, savvy and globally enriched. THE NEGATIVES - Connectedness Low -friction instant access to nearly everything, anytime, anywhere is causing OF DIGITAL LIFE overload stress, anxiety, sleeplessness and loss of patience. Some experts noted that they witness people missing out on or diminishing important face-to-face social interactions and experiences. Some also noted that work demands and entertainment lures tug away at users 24/7/365 and that there is a loss of attention to “real life.” - Trust tensions The business model of internet platforms is mostly built on an attention economy that rewards addictive products that heighten users’ emotions and perpetuate polarization. In addition, there are concerns among experts about issues of security, surveillance and privacy. - Personal identity Self-promotion, narcissism, click bait, trolling, propaganda and pressures to issues conform have become dominant in social networks, causing some individuals to experience the loss of self-confidence and self-esteem. This encourages them to lose faith in others and adopt a negative world view. - Focus failures Digital life fosters shallow engagement with information as people glide through multiple information streams daily, taking little time for reflection. People have a diminishing capacity to concentrate well enough to stay on task and do long- term, deep-dive thinking. PEW RESEARCH CENTER and ELON UNIVERSITY’S IMAGINING THE INTERNET CENTER The remainder of this report draws from elaboration of these ideas by respondents who shared anecdotes and observations. It is broken into three chapters: 1) anecdotes and comments about the positives of digital life; 2) anecdotes and comments about potentially harmful aspects of that life; and 3) responses in which people’s statements or anecdotes were fairly evenly split with both pros and cons of digital life. Some responses are lightly edited for style. www.pewresearch.org 4 PEW RESEARCH CENTER 1. The positives of digital life The greatest share of participants in this canvassing said their own experience and their observed experience among friends is that digital life improves many of the dimensions of their work, play and home lives. They cited broad changes for the better as the internet revolutionized everything, from the most pressing intellectual and emotional experiences to some of the most prosaic and everyday aspects of existence. Louis Rossetto, self-proclaimed “troublemaker” and founder and former editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, summed it all up this way: “Digital technology is so broad today as to encompass almost everything. No product is made today, no person moves today, nothing is collected, analyzed or communicated without some ‘digital technology’ being an integral part of it. That, in itself, speaks to the overwhelming ‘value’ of digital technology. It is so useful that in short order it has become an integral part of all of our lives. That doesn’t happen because it makes our lives miserable.” Larry Irving, co-founder of The Mobile Alliance for Global Good, wrote, “There is almost no area in which digital technology has not impacted me and my family’s life. I work more from home and have more flexibility and a global client base because of digital technology. I monitor my health and keep my physician informed using data technology. My wife has gone back to a graduate school program and is much more connected to school because of technology. My entertainment and reading options have exploded exponentially because of new technologies. Use of home speakers, Internet of Things, AI [artificial intelligence] and other emerging technologies is just impacting my life and likely will become more central. I used to write out first drafts of memos longhand. Increasingly I use a new free beta AI-based transcription service Temi to dictate my first draft and then edit that draft. Even when it’s awful, that first draft is better than staring at that blank piece of paper trying to think of something to say. I have numerous meetings with people I don’t know or only met once or twice previously. Recently I had a meeting with someone I didn’t know well. An app I use Accompany pulled up an email exchange between the two of us a decade ago about an issue we both care about. Accompany also provided me a very recent article where the person I was meeting with discussed the same issue and current concerns. Having that knowledge was incredible useful for our recent meeting and simply could not/would not have been possible without the use of digital technology.” Mike Liebhold, senior researcher and distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future, wrote, “Almost every member of my family regularly uses the internet to inform or improve aspects of their well-being: diet, fitness, health, social interaction with family and friends in person and online, education, entertainment, employment, commerce, finance and civic engagement.” www.pewresearch.org 5 PEW RESEARCH CENTER William Schrader, the founding CEO of PSINet, wrote, “Every single day: I have private communications with business associates in Europe, Asia, Latin America and in North America, and I receive emails or social media notices from my family members and their extended friends, and I receive the latest news and alerts from 20 different real news publications (such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and the Economist). All of this comes with little effort. And, after doing my local security, I can check every public investment I have made anywhere on earth and I can check my bank accounts and make transactions I deem of import, and I can search for any one or multiple piece of information that I need instantly, with or without Wi-Fi. Yes, I have what I wanted, everything at my fingertips.