Can Jake tie together social attachment and Dungeons and Dragons Online into one article? Watch him try...

FuturePundit posted an article about the decline in American's social attachment that my Mom actually emailed to me. My Mom being a Mom has a continuing interest in my social health, particular where this is related to my reproductive success (just kidding Mom).

Anyway, this article is about a study that shows the Americans have declining numbers of friends and confidants:

It compared data from 1985 and 2004 and found that the mean number of people with whom Americans can discuss matters important to them dropped by nearly one-third, from 2.94 people in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004.

Researchers also found that the number of people who said they had no one with whom to discuss such matters more than doubled, to nearly 25 percent. The survey found that both family and non-family confidants dropped, with the loss greatest in non-family connections.

The study paints a picture of Americans' social contacts as a "densely connected, close, homogeneous set of ties slowly closing in on itself, becoming smaller, more tightly interconnected, more focused on the very strong bonds of the nuclear family."

That means fewer contacts created through clubs, neighbors and organizations outside the home -- a phenomenon popularly known as "bowling alone," from the 2000 book of the same title by Robert D. Putnam.

There are lots of reasons to speculate about why this would be. Future Pundit speculates about several, and I think his speculation is as good as mine:

I certainly spend more time communicating with people remotely due to the internet. But hasn't the decline in the cost of phone calls shifted more time spent communicating to remote communication as well?

On the one hand, phones let people stay in contact with other people who are no longer living near them. On the other hand, time spent on the phone reduces time available to deal with people face-to-face. That face time seems more likely to develop friendships.

What I wonder: Are people specializing their relationship needs? Instead of having a friend that one uses for many things do people have more relationships where each relationship satisfies a smaller range of needs?

We can meet many more people. We can live in more places, work in more places, play in more places. We can communicate with people around the world. Look at yourself reading my writing right now. You can read some thoughts of some guy who is not a professional writer and you can respond to him in the comments and read my responses in return. That all pulls you away from developing relationships in person where you are.

I, however, got to thinking though about this idea of social attachment and the Internet, and oddly enough it got me thinking about Dungeons and Dragons Online. (Suck on that transition...yes this is related...just bear with me.)

Dungeons and Dragons Online is what is called a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (or MMORPG to the initiated). MMORPGs are like normal video games with the exception that when you descend in this video game world, the other characters are played by people rather than the computer program. For a small fee, you can take up a persona that you -- if you are not like me -- abandoned in your early teens.

For example, I am Fredward, Smoter of Kobolds. What I do is light little, ugly-looking things on fire with my mind. In the game, you can advance, learn cool little spells, acquire items, and blast the living hell out of kobolds. More than that you can conference with other players as you try and perform quests to save princesses and generally be a badass. DDO has a functionality where you can even talk to the other players using voIP while you do this.

I decided to try this whole gaming business one weekend, I swear, only for the intellectual curiousity of it, but I will tell you that these games become totally addictive. It is not necessarily the escapism of it, but more the comradery between players. Total strangers would invite you to join their group and chat with you online. Codes of ethics appear to have formed by spontaneous generation because stragglers or those who did not play nice are ostracized. Friendships are formed for evenings, and -- for some -- for longer than evenings. Shockingly, girls even play these games. I even met one, and she sounded like she was neither socially inept nor absolutely hideous.

This whole business got me thinking. The Internet in this case has facilitated the formation of a social group where none before had existed. It has allowed a group of individuals who had been relegated to loneliness to express their interests. In this sense, the Internet is a positive social phenomena because it allows for the peculiar and the particular.

A similar argument can be made for internet dating. Internet dating may have a sinister reputation as being frequented by antisocials and pedorasts but let's try and be magnanimous in our judgement. Think of it this way. Say you are a guy in your late 50s who just lost his wife. In an earlier day, your dating market is looking rather bleak. You can either try for the people you work with (not a good idea) or frequent bars with people half your age (an even worse idea). You have literally aged yourself out of the remairrage market. In contrast, now with the Internet you can meet other eligible people your age who have similar interests. You future filled with a lonely death annoying the crap out of your immediate family has lightened considerably.

Thinking of the Internet this way makes me think two things:

1) The survey above likely missed the depth and diversity of modern social interactions. People tend to discount the relationships that they develop over the Internet as not-a-community or not-real, but this need not be the case. I am happy to say that I participate in the great conversation of science via the Internet, and I consider that a real and meaningful social connection that I have with the world.

2) We are moving towards what I would call an Alternaworlds scenario. In Alternaworlds, technology such as the Internet allows people to shape the participation and the nature of their interactions with others as they see fit. If they want a world in which they can design gardens for others to walk through, so be it. If they want a world where they can beat the holy hell out of a wyvern, so be it.

And Alternaworlds have every characteristic of the real world, including real economic interactions. I was speaking to a friend of mine who plays World of Warcraft (another MMORPG). He told me that there are some characters in the game who buy (or is it make?) items of value and sell them to players in the game in exchange for money in the real world. Economic and social interaction in Alternaworlds can be transmissible between them and the real world. Creativity, property, intellect, or special skills can determine value in both settings.

In a sense, real world isn't even a good term anymore. A better term would be the "literal world."

Viewed from this vantage point, I can't but think that the modern Internet age will be one filled with more and more fulfilling social interactions rather than less.

And thus, after my foray into speculation, I return reluctantly to my busy job of destruction.

Sincerely yours,
Fredward, Smoter of Kobolds