Young people who have grown up in the information age can hardly imagine what a Saturday night would be like if they were unable to text message or call their friends. The very idea causes a degree of stress for Penn students — or so College juniors Ricky Lurito and Jared Waxman hypothesize.
Ten months ago, Lurito began planning a study to answer a question he had been pondering: how does a networked life, which affords individuals the capacity to be in almost constant communication through various mediums, affect our personal interactions?
To answer the question, he and Waxman plan to conduct a study from Oct. 30 to Nov. 13. The pair will study the habits of 120 Penn students in the technological realms of Facebook, cell phone calls, texts, e-mails and instant messages.
Lurito explained that the project begins with all participants completing a survey, which he believes will provide a “general overview of how people think technology is shaping society and how they fit into the connected world.”
After the survey, participants will use technology as they normally would for a week, which Lurito said serves as the control for the experiment. To be able to understand how usage changes when one form of communication is taken away, they must have an understanding of individuals’ normal behaviors, he explained.
Data collected from participants will include the number of sent texts, number and duration of phone calls, number and duration of instant message chats, number of e-mails and time spent on Facebook.
The project leaders created an extensive contract to protect the privacy of the users and explain that all actions will be monitored for data only, not for content.
In the second week, students will be divided into groups of 20. Each group will have a different form of communication taken away, such as e-mail. One group of 20 will serve as the control group and maintain access to all modes of contact, Lurito said.
After the study is complete, participants will once again have access to the communication tool they lost and will complete the same survey they took at the beginning.
Lurito explained that the survey is a tool to see “how the changes in demonstrated activity are correlated with the psychological changes.”
Waxman, a math major, will run the statistical analysis on the data under the guidance of two Wharton professors. He and Lurito hope to publish their findings at the end of the spring semester, Waxman said.
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