From Earth to Solaria and Back The evolution of social interactions in the Internet era

1
From Earth to Solaria and BackThe evolution of
social interactions in the Internet era

• Fabio Sabatini
• Sapienza University of RomeDepartment of
  Economics and Law

Congresso Iberoamericano de Sistemas de
Conhecimento Vale dos Vinhedos - Bento Gonçalves,
Brasil October 27, 2011
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Social Capital Gatewayhttp//www.socialcapitalgat
eway.org/
3
you can download my papers from
http//www.socialcapitalgateway.org/editor
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This presentation will be largely devoted to the
role of the Internet in the accumulation of
social capital. All references can be retrieved
(and freely downloaded) at the url
http//www.socialcapitalgateway.org/internet
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Solaria

• Solaria is a fictional planet Isaac Asimov
  described in the Foundation and Robot series.
• It was the last of the fifty worlds to be
  colonized by the so-called Spacers, a line of
  space colonists.
• After centuries of sustained economic growth
  boosted by an unbounded technical progress,
  Solaria developed the most eccentric culture of
  the colonies.

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Solaria

• Originally, there were about 20,000 people living
  alone in vast estates.
• Solarians lives were marked by technology
  citizens never had to meet, save for sexual
  contact for reproductive purposes.
• All other contact was accomplished by
  sophisticated holographic viewing systems, with
  most Solarians exhibiting a strong phobia towards
  actual contact, or even being in the same room as
  another human.
• All work was done by robots there were indeed
  thousands of robots for every Solarian.

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Solaria

• As centuries went by, economic growth and
  technical progress made Solaria become even more
  rigidly and obsessively isolationist. The planet
  cut off all contact with the rest of the Galaxy
  (although continuing to monitor hyperspatial
  communications).
• Its inhabitants genetically altered themselves to
  be hermaphroditic in order to avoid sexual
  contacts.
• At the final stage of Solarian civilization, the
  human inhabitants disappeared, giving the
  impression that they had died out (although they
  had in fact withdrawn underground). Their estates
  continued to be worked by millions of robots.

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Growth, technology and the risk of
dehumanization

• Asimov draws on the Solaria metaphor to warn
  against the risks of dehumanization that may be
  caused by excessive growth and technical
  progress.
• In the 1950s, Asimovs novel well embodied the
  common fear according to which technology would
  have progressively destroyed social interaction.

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Today, October 27, 2011

• Today, our lives are marked by technology almost
  as those of Solarians, and despite the
  spreading of some criticism - growth is still
  the policy makers pole star.
• The widespread diffusion of broadband, the
  internet revolution, and the true explosion of
  online networks like Facebook, Twitter, and
  Flickr create growing worries about the risk of
  relational poverty.
• The folk wisdom pointing to technology as one of
  the major responsible of the widespread social
  isolation of our time has get stronger and
  stronger, walking at the same pace of
  technological advance.

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What is happening to social interactions?

• According to the earlier sociological literature
  on the Internet, communication technologies may
  lower the probability of having face-to-face
  contacts with family, neighbours, or friends in
  ones home.
• Wellman et al. (2006) note that internet usage
  may even interfere with communication in the
  home, creating a post-familial family where
  family members spend time interacting with
  computers, rather than with each other.

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The supposed decline in social capital

• Robert Putnam (1995 2000) has documented how
  most indicators of social capital followed an
  inverted U path in the United States during the
  twentieth century.
• During the first two thirds of the century
  Americans took a more and more active role in
  the social and political life of their
  communities, and they behaved in an increasingly
  trustworthy way toward one another (2000, p.
  183).
• Then, beginning in the 1960s and 1970s and
  accelerating in the 1980s and 1990s, an erosion
  of the stock of American social capital started.

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The supposed decline in social capital
1) Pressure on time and money2) Mobility and
sprawlThese phenomena have been considered in
the economic literature as channels through which
economic growth can cause a reduction in social
connectedness.
Putnam discusses 3 main explanations for this
inverted-U trend
3) Technology and mass mediaTechnology has made
news and entertainment increasingly
individualized. Electronic technology allows us
to consume hand-tailored entertainment in
private, even utterly alone the time allocation
of Americans massively shifted toward home-based
activities (especially watching TV) and away from
socializing outside the home (2000, pp. 216-217
and 238).
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The negative social externalities of growth

• It is possible to argue that the pressure on time
  exerted by economic growth acts as a factor
  hampering the consolidation of social ties,
  thereby leading to an erosion of the stock of
  social capital.
• Routledge and von Amsberg (JME, 2003) show that
  the technical change and innovation generally
  associated to growth influence social capital by
  rising labour mobility higher levels of turnover
  may hamper the consolidation of social ties, both
  inside and outside the workplace.
• Moreover, the uncertainty of future incomes
  related to increased mobility affects any form of
  long-term planning of life activities such as
  marriage and procreation.

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The negative social externalities of growth

• An early account of this process is given by Fred
  Hirsch (Social Limits to Growth, 1976) As the
  subjective cost of time rises, pressure for
  specific balancing of personal advantage in
  social relationships will increase ... Perception
  of the time spent in social relationships as a
  cost is itself a product of privatized affluence.
  
• The effect is to whittle down the amount of
  friendship and social contact ... The huge
  increase in personal mobility in modern economies
  adds to the problem by making sociability more of
  a public and less of a private good.

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The negative social externalities of technology

• Conventional wisdom suggests that growths
  perverse effects on social cohesion are bound to
  be exacerbated by technical progress (Solaria
  syndrome).
• In an interview to the New York Times, Robert
  Putnam stated that The distinctive effect of
  technology has been to enable us to get
  entertainment and information while remaining
  entirely alone.
• Its fundamentally bad because the lack of social
  contact means that we dont share information and
  values and outlook that we should.

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Why should economists care about social capital?

• One of the more intriguing theses standing from
  the debate is that trust and social capital are
  key factors for making the economy work in the
  right way.
• The economys ability of reproducing itself,
  thereby experiencing sustainable growth, depends
  also on its ability to foster - or, at least, to
  preserve - its endowments of social capital.
• A summary of the mechanism
• a) a social environment rich of participation
  opportunities is a fertile ground for nurturing
  trust and shared values, where repeated
  interactions foster the diffusion of information
  and raise reputations relevance.
• b) The higher opportunity cost of free-riding in
  prisoners dilemma kind of situations makes the
  agents behaviour more foreseeable causing an
  overall reduction of uncertainty.
• c) Therefore, an increase in trust-based
  relations reduce monitoring costs and, more in
  general, the average cost of transactions,
  specially the highly trust-sensitive ones (e.g.
  those ones taking place in the financial market).
• d) In the long run, such a mechanism may boost
  growth and development.

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Why should economists care about social capital?

• The reverse effect that growth and development
  exert on the accumulation of social capital is a
  surprisingly (and guiltily) neglected topic in
  the economic debate ().
• It is logical to argue that the mechanism works
  along two directions not only social capital
  feeds growth and development growth and
  development create, shape, destroy social capital
  as well. In other words, the mechanism is
  circular.
• This presentation will try to provide some hints
  on the conditions under which such a social
  capital-fed development can be sustainable in the
  long run or, in other terms, when the social
  capital ? trust ? development cycle may be able
  to self-feed.

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Why should economists care about social capital?

• Sustainable development can be defined as a
  process for improving the range of opportunities
  that will enable individual human beings and
  communities to achieve their aspirations and full
  potential over a sustained period of time (i.e.
  in the long run), while maintaining the
  resilience of economic, social and environmental
  systems.
• We could adapt this definition of sustainable
  development to our framework by stating that
  development is sustainable as far as it does not
  erode the stock of social capital of the economy.

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Bibliographical references on the relationship
between social capital and economic growth are
available at the url http//www.socialcapitalgatew
ay.org/growth
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A model Antoci, Sabatini and Sodini (2011, JEBO)

• We assume that, in each instant of time t, the
  well-being of the individual depends on the
  consumption of two goods a private (or material)
  good, Ci(t), and a socially provided (or
  relational) good, Bi(t).
• Even if private and relational goods satisfy
  different needs, the private good can be consumed
  as a substitute for the relational one.
• For example, when the social environment is poor,
  people may be constrained to replace human
  interactions, e.g. joining the meetings of a
  cultural circle or playing football with friends,
  with private consumption, e.g. staying at home
  and watching TV or playing a virtual match
  against the computer.

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Definition of relational goods

• Relational goods are a distinctive type of good
  that can only be enjoyed if shared with others.
  They are different from private goods, which are
  enjoyed alone (Uhlaner 1989). Following Coleman
  (1988, 1990), we assume that social participation
  (i.e. the production/consumption of relational
  goods) generates social capital as a by-product.

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Model Private vs. relational goods

• We assume that Bi(t) is produced through the
  joint action of the time devoted to social
  activities, the average social participation, and
  the stock of social capital
• The time agent i does not spend for social
  participation, is used as an input in the
  production of the private good. Moreover, we
  model the claims of the empirical literature by
  assuming that SC plays a role in private
  production

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Model Private vs. relational goods

• The instantaneous utility of the representative
  agent is represented by the following CES
  function
• i.e. agents well-being depends on private and
  relational goods.
• We assume that private goods can satisfy both
  private and social needs. On the contrary,
  relational goods cannot satisfy primary needs
  such as food, security, clothing, and shelter.

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Model Private vs. relational goods

• As we state in the introduction, these goods
  serve different needs. However, we introduce the
  possibility that private goods substitute for
  relational ones in the satisfaction of social
  needs, or, at least, for compensating the
  deprivation of human interactions. For example, a
  material, highly technology intensive, good like
  a playstation can (partially) console for the
  unavailability of 21 friends to play football on
  a sport field.
• The extent to which such a substitution process
  can take place is given by
  measuring the (constant) elasticity of
  substitution between B and C. We will address
  two cases
• Low substitutability between B and C (? gt 0). In
  this situation, material and relational goods are
  complements.
• High substitutability between material and
  relational goods (? gt 0). We will refer to this
  case by saying that B and C are substitutes.

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Model accumulation of social capital

• Following hints from rational choice sociology,
  we assume that most of the times the creation of
  social ties does not depend on rational
  investment decisions. Social capital is
  accumulated as a by-product of social
  participation.
• Following hints from political science, we assume
  that the production of private goods exerts a
  positive spillover on social capitals
  accumulation.
• Since human relations need care to be preserved,
  we introduce a positive SCs depreciation rate ?
  to account for their possible cooling over time

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Model accumulation of social capital

• The resulting stock is a public resource, which
  enters as an argument in every agents utility
  function due to its ability to contribute to the
  production of both private and relational goods.

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Model the agents problem

• Letting r be the discounting rate of future
  utility, the i-agents maximization problem is
• Under the constraint
• Since agents are a continuum, i takes the average
  values of s, B, and Y as given.
• Please refer to the paper if you want to learn
  more about the exact functional forms.

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Model exogenous technological progress

• In this framework, we introduce an exogenous
  technological progress.
• We assume that technological progress raises
  productivity in the production of both private
  and relational goods.
• The assumption is based on the observation that
  technology can help the production of relational
  goods in a variety of ways.
• where T represents technological progress,
  growing at the exogenous rate µ.

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Results

• If the following assumptions hold
• There is positive substitutability between B and
  C
• and Ks gives a significant contribution to the
  production of private goods.
• and technological progress contributes to the
  production of material goods more than to the
  production of relational goods
• Then the stock of social capital may exhibit a
  growth followed by a decline, so that its
  relationship with technological progress is
  described by an inverted U-shaped curve.

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Results

• If there is no substitutability between B and C
• Or if
• Ks contributes to the production of relational
  goods more than to the production of material
  goods
• and technological progress supports productivity
  more in the production of relational goods than
  in the production of material goods
• Then, the stock of social capital can unboundedly
  grow.

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Interpretation of results

• The role of technology in social interactions.
• When can technological progress support the
  production of relational goods more than the
  production of material goods?
• In our view, this is the case for online
  networking, i.e. participation to social
  networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

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Interpretation of results

• In the rest of the presentation, we will show
• A) how, in a world characterized by a rising
  pressure on time, the evolution of human
  interaction implies a partial shift from
  face-to-face interactions to Internet-mediated
  interactions.
• B) Why we do not have to worry about this
  change.

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An evolutionary model (Antoci et al. 2011c and
2011d)

• We model a society composed by a continuum of
  identical individuals. In each instant of time
  they choose how to allocate their leisure time,
  p, which is exogenously given, between two kinds
  of social interaction.
• We assume that, in each instant of time t
• 1) A share x(t) of agents embrace a social
  networking strategy SN, i.e. their social
  participation relies both on online networks and
  face to face interaction.
• 2) The remaining share of the population 1
  x(t) adopts a face-to-face strategy FF they do
  not interact online and thus develop all their
  relationships through face to face encounters.

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Payoffs

• The payoff of the FF strategydepends on x(t) and
  on the share of time devoted to social
  interaction, p.
• The payoff of the SN strategy depends on the
  share of the population adopting it, x(t), on the
  time agents devote to social participation, p,
  and on the wealth of ties - or, in other words,
  the stock of social capital - of online networks
  at time t, Kn(t)

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The Internet social capital as a public good

• The stock Kn(t) is a public good, in that it
  potentially benefits whoever is connected to the
  Web and adopts the SN strategy.
• A peculiarity of Kn(t) is that it allows
  asynchronous interactions which may help people
  to reconcile working activities and pervasive
  busyness with the need to take care of social
  relationships. When individuals cannot meet in
  person due to time differences (think, for
  example, of people working on a night shift, or
  of friends living in different hemispheres), the
  Internet social capital offers the possibility of
  a quality though deferred interaction.
• What happens here is NOT the replacement of
  actual encounters with deferred, more impersonal
  and less deep, contacts.
• Rather, in this case the Internet social capital
  offers individuals the possibility to preserve
  relationships which would otherwise be unravelled
  by busyness, distance, and the pressure of time.

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Payoffs further assumptions

• We assume that the payoff of the FF strategy
  decreases as the share of the population adopting
  the SN strategy grows.
• The payoff of the SN strategy increases as Kn,
  i.e. the stock of the internets social capital,
  grows.
• In other words, the more our friends join
  Facebook, the higher the utility of subscribing
  to the platform will be as well. On the other
  hand, being outside of the network (i.e.
  continuing to play the FF strategy) may imply an
  increasing relational cost.

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Payoffs further assumptions (the role of p)

• The more the time p available for social
  participation declines, the more the SN strategy
  becomes comparatively more profitable.
• By contrast, a growth in the time p for leisure
  makes the FF strategy comparatively more
  profitable.
• If agents are forced to be deeply immersed in
  their professional activities, the possibility to
  take care of human relationships in spare moments
  (e.g., while on the train, or at home before
  going to sleep) becomes a precious means for the
  preservation of social life.
• SN can thus be interpreted also as a defensive
  strategy that individuals adopt to protect their
  social life from growing pressure on time.

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Payoffs further assumptions (the role of p)

• Please refer to the full papers for the
  development of the theoretical framework
• - Antoci, A., Sabatini, F., Sodini, M. (2011b).
  See You on Facebook! A framework for analyzing
  the role of computer-mediated interaction in the
  evolution of social capital. Submitted.
• - Antoci, A., Sabatini, F., Sodini, M. (2011c).
  Bowling alone but tweeting together the
  evolution of human interaction in the social
  networking Era. Submitted.

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Results of the analysis of the model

• We show that two extreme stationary states are
  attractive
• 1) (Kn, x) (0, 0) all agents adopt the FF
  strategy
• 2) (Kn, x) (pß / ?), 1 the stock of the
  Internet social capital reaches its highest
  possible level and all agents embrace the social
  networking strategy.

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Results of the analysis of the model

• In the two cited papers we show that the basins
  of attraction of the stationary state where all
  agents chose the SN strategy (and the stock Kn
  representing the wealth of knowledge and ties of
  the Internet reaches its highest level) expands
  as the time p available for social participation
  decreases.
• Internet-mediated interaction can be seen as a
  tool allowing individuals to manage their social
  relationships despite increasing time pressures
  and possible distance constraints.

The yellow line moves towards the left-bottom
part of the plane as p decreases
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Empirical evidence

• Early sociological studies on computer-mediated
  communication shared the fear that the Internet
  would cause a progressive reduction in social
  interactions, just as the activity of watching TV
  does.
• The main argument shared by Internet skeptics was
  based on the presumption that the more time
  people spend using the Internet during leisure
  time, the more time has to be detracted from
  social activities (Katz et al. 2001 Nie et al.
  2002, Attewel et al. 2003 Gershuny 2003
  Robinson and Martin 2010).
• However, studies emphasizing the negative
  correlation between Internet usage and
  sociability date back to just shortly before the
  explosion of online networking, and they could
  not differentiate between pure entertainment and
  social activities.
• At that time, using the internet was
  predominantly an individual activity like
  watching TV or reading newspapers.

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Pew Research Center on Internet American Life

• Today, the use of the internet is strongly
  related to being connected to social networking
  sites, which in turn entails forms of engagement
  in social activities.
• In the U.S. 73 of online teens (aged 12-17) and
  an equal number (72) of young adults (18-29) use
  social network sites.
• In the U.S. in May 2011 fully 65 of online
  adults now use social networking sites.
• This figure marks a dramatic increase from the
  first time the Project surveyed usage of social
  networking sites in February of 2005. At that
  time just 8 of internet users or 5 of all
  adults said they used SNSs.
• In December 2010, U.S. Internet users were found
  to be more likely than others to be active in
  some kind of voluntary group or organization 80
  of American Internet users participate in groups,
  compared with 56 of non-Internet users.
• Social media users are even more likely to be
  active 82 of social network users and 85 of
  Twitter users are group participants (Rainie et
  al. 2011).
• This evolution makes any comparison between the
  internet and TV anachronistic!

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Empirical evidence

• Recent empirical evidence suggests that SNSs
• a) support the strengthening of bonding and
  bridging social capital (Steinfield et al. 2008,
  Park et al. 2009 Pénard and Poussing 2010
  Bauernschuster et al. 2011)
• b) allow the crystallization of weak or latent
  ties that might otherwise remain ephemeral
  (Haythornthwaite 2005, Ellison et al. 2007 2011
  Miyata and Kobayashi 2008)
• c) facilitate the establishment of
  collaborations in the academic community (Matzat
  2004)
• d) support teenagers' self-esteem - encouraging
  them to relate to their peers (Ellison et al.
  2007 2011 Steinfield et al. 2008)
• e) stimulate social learning (Burke et al. 2010)
• f) enhance social trust (Matzat 2010), civic
  engagement (Stern and Adams 2010 Zhang et al.
  2010) and political participation (Gil de Zúñiga
  et al. 2011) ? SEE THE ARAB SPRING!
• g) help the promotion of collective action
  (Landqvist and Teigland 2010).

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Ellison et al. (2007)

• Drawing on survey data from a random sample of
  800 undergraduate students, Ellison et al. (2007)
  find that certain types of Facebook use can help
  individuals accumulate and maintain bridging
  social capital.
• The authors suspect that the social network helps
  students to overcome the barriers to
  participation so that individuals who might
  otherwise shy away from initiating communication
  with others are encouraged to do so through the
  Facebook infrastructure.
• In the authors' words, highly engaged users are
  using Facebook to crystallize relationships
  that might otherwise remain ephemeral (2007).
• Haythornthwaite (2005) argues that social media
  create latent tie connectivity among group
  members that provides the technical means for
  activating weak ties (p. 125). Latent ties are
  those social network ties that are technically
  possible but not activated socially (p. 137)

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The quality of Internet-mediated communication

• Web-mediated asynchronous interactions are not
  necessarily of inferior quality compared to
  simultaneous, face-to-face, interactions.
• Experiments found that the depth of a friendship
  can be significantly improved by
  computer-mediated communication. Apparently, by
  way of online relationships individuals become
  far better in expressing their true selves and
  feelings (Ellison et al. 2007 Park et al. 2009b
  Burke et al. 2010 Sheldon 2010 Burke and
  Settles 2011).
• Interactions through the Internet can foster the
  social inclusion of individuals suffering from
  social anxiety, i.e. anxiety about social
  situations, interactions with others, and being
  evaluated by others (Caplan 2007 Steinfield et
  al. 2008).
• Thanks to new tools such as Facebook messages and
  Flickr mails, many people have regained the habit
  of writing letters. Psychological studies claim
  this form of interaction can lead to an
  improvement in the quality of relationships.

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Bauernschuster et al. (2011)

• In a recent paper based on data drawn from the
  2008 section of the German Socio-Economic Panel
  and confidential data provided by Deutsche
  Telekom, Bauernschuster et al. (2011) find that
  having broadband Internet access at home has
  positive effects on the frequency of visiting
  theaters, the opera, and exhibitions and on the
  frequency of visiting friends, even after
  controlling for endogeneity through instrumental
  variables estimates and by accounting for county
  fixed effects.
• Exploring a sub-sample of children aged 7 to 16
  living in the sampled households, the authors
  further find evidence that having broadband
  Internet access at home increases the number of
  children's out-of-school social activities, such
  as doing sports or ballet, taking music or
  painting lessons, or joining a youth club.

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Internet, relational goods, and happiness

• Since engagement in relational activities and
  social capital are positively correlated with
  happiness (Becchetti et al. 2008 Bruni and
  Stanca 2008 Gui 2010 Stanca 2010 Bartolini et
  al. 2011), Internet usage could also have a
  positive effect on individual well-being (see
  Pénard and Poussing 2011 and Sabatini 2011).
• It thus seems reasonable to argue that Internet
  use can support well-being by counterbalancing
  some detrimental effects of the increasing
  pressure on time. From the policy point of view,
  this implies that the REDUCTION IN THE DIGITAL
  DIVIDE could be an effective measure to contain
  inequalities in the distribution of well-being.

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Summary

• Economic growth and technological progress can
  cause the disruption of social ties and the
  erosion of social capital ? SOLARIA SYNDROME.
• The Solaria Syndrome can be avoided if and only
  if technological progress contributes to the
  production of relational goods at least as much
  as it contributes to the production of material
  goods.

49
Summary

• This condition would have been irrealistic at the
  beginning of the current decade.
• Today, the explosion of online networking has
  brought a major change in the role of technology
  in the development of our social life.
• When the social environment is poor in
  opportunities for participation and/or the
  pressure on time increases (for example due to
  the need to increase working hours, the social
  capital stored in the Internet can help
  individuals to defend their sociability.

50
Summary

• In our view, the Internet is offering us a way
  back from Solaria to Earth.
• The reduction in digital divide should be a major
  policy objective for the preservation of social
  cohesion (making growth more socially
  sustainable in the long run) and the reduction
  of inequalities in the distribution of
  well-being.
• (Besides the obvious benefits for the economic
  activity)

51
Bibliography of this presentation

• All references can be retreived and downloaded
  free of charge at the url
• http//www.socialcapitalgateway.org/
• Photos have been taken from Flickr with a
  creative commons license.
• Authors are Mitchell Joyce and Aldo Cavini
  Benedetti.

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