The Internet in Daily Life

No other information and communication technology in history has spread at the pace of the Internet. Data from the Pew Research Center and NetLab, focused on the North America, shows how the spread of digital technology has reshaped the flow of daily life, vastly expanded the personal and information boundaries of users, and transformed the way people take care of their health, learn new things, and act as citizens. While change continues, Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman discern general social trends, including a large shift from small, tight-knit, locally rooted social groups to larger, more loosely knit, and geographically expanded personal networks, which they call “networked individualism.” This chapter provides an introduction into how digital innovations over the past generation have been adopted by users and how the utility of these tools is reshaping the ways people spend their time, enlighten themselves, and carry on in their daily lives.