The Future of Online Socializing— from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center

Overview
The social benefits of internet use will far outweigh the negatives over the next decade, according to experts. They say this is because email, social networks, and other online tools offer “low friction” opportunities to create, enhance, and rediscover social ties that make a difference in people’s lives. The internet lowers traditional communications constraints of cost, geography, and time; and it supports the type of open information sharing that brings people together.