Abstract
Abstract
This work conceptualizes human behavior on the Internet. The study was conducted with 10 university participants representing two different cultural backgrounds, Asian and Western. The participants were asked to visit any Web page on the Internet for 15 minutes, for 30 minutes, and for 1 hour. The results showed that participants displayed no signs of anxiousness during the 15-minute task and very little anxiousness during the 30-minute task. Western participants showed overall more anxiousness than Asian participants. However, all participants showed anxiousness during the 1-hour task. Data on comparative human anxiety were collected on the basis of a literature review of social fun, online belonging, and community on the Internet. Only the limited set of data of the participant is discussed in this article.
Introduction
Today, the number of activities carried out on the Internet is increasing. Activities on the Internet include tweeting, chatting, reading, writing, and blogging. It has been found that because of the large number of such activities, people can feel anxious about using Internet content; people can develop Internet anxiety. 1
Internet anxiety is caused by Internet content, both information and applications. More recently, Internet anxiety has been defined as “a feeling of fear and apprehension felt by individuals when using computers or considering the use of a computer.” 2 In a similar manner, anxiety could be defined as feelings of frustration, nervousness, worry, and discomfort related to using various content on the Internet. To understand Internet anxiety, various technical concepts have to be understood (e.g., WWW, Web browsers).
The World Wide Web (WWW) is a system of Internet servers, which supports formatted documents. The documents are formatted using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and these formatted documents link to other documents (e.g., text, audio, video files). The applications that access these documents are the various Web browsers that are available (e.g., Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, etc.).
The most prevalent interaction medium of people on the Internet is a Web browser. These Web browsers are not particularly interactive and they are vulnerable to various security attacks and threats (e.g., spam, viruses, and privacy issues). One possible cause of Internet anxiety may be attributable to less than efficient and effective Web browsers.
Generally, the Internet can be considered a matured, universal network. At the same time, we must be aware of the negative consequences of overuse of the Internet (e.g., Internet addiction, Internet anxiety) and of the human behaviors that are enabled by this communication medium (e.g., cyberbullying, sexting). The Internet has begun to mirror human society, with a great potential for both positive and negative consequences; yet its design does not follow social-engineering principles. The downside of its social impact has attracted national, international, educational, and political attention. As the reach of the Internet expands more and more into daily activities, and dependency on the Internet increases, much research has focused on the anxiety, addiction, and other negative consequences of its use. 3 To investigate these phenomena further, understanding human behavior on the Internet becomes essential.
The richness of human behavior and the growing variety of technologies with which people can interact open a complex field for researchers to explore—from psychology to cognitive science, behavioral science to communication technology. Further research is needed to relate human behavior to design, style, human-behavior theories, standards, procedures, and guidelines in order to build an appropriate model of interaction.
Literature Review
Community and online community
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English, v 0.48, has five definitions of the word community, each with slightly different nuances but all emphasizing a common idea: a body of humans with common rights, privileges, or interests, or living in the same place under the same laws and regulations. These groups share some common form of social factor, ranging from interests, experience, attitude, race, and profession to religion, goals, and locations. Wellman et al. 4 describe an additional set of essentials for a community: sociability, support, information, social identities, and a sense of belonging. In the context of the Internet, this prompts a number of questions. What is an online community? Does installing community software make you part of an online community? Is a community any group of people? Is community when people feel warm and fuzzy inside because of participation in a group? While it is not hard to understand what an online community is, it is a concept that is slippery to define and tricky to measure. The term online community is a buzzword, especially now that e-commerce entrepreneurs are realizing that online communities can help expand their markets and bolster sales. Online social networks seem to work with similar rules to offline social networks, by using community aspects and social objects in a digital environment.
Sociability
In many communities, both online and offline, the goal is the simple idea of being sociable. Sociability is necessary to the human psyche; it offers a very important basis for other goals of a community. One example is a bar, where people come together not only because of proximity or convenience, but also to be sociable, to enjoy themselves, to converse with others with common interests, and to benefit from encounters with others.
Social support
One feature of social networking that is helpful in understanding human behavior is support. Giving and getting support in any community, when successful, can lead to more valuable and personal relationships.
Information, identity, and belonging
Many online communities, from scientific communities to special-interest groups (e.g., hobbyists, collectors) are built around information exchange. A few communities even build their raison d'être around the topic of information, for example, scientific communities that gather, share, and build information. One part of a community-member's identity is the profile that is built within the community, and which can be used to extend social possibilities. One example of building such a profile is a résumé, or curriculum vitae, that represents one's identity within the work-force community. In this scenario, the profile can be used to differentiate personal identity, and can also be used to explore information regarding personal identity. Therefore, it is very difficult to differentiate which information is part of the community. Communities tend to set conditions that have to be met for members to belong. These boundaries can be based on very physical constraints like “needs a photo camera,” or more artificial ones like “needs to get invited by an existing member.” Being part of an online community mostly consists of knowing how to attract attention. 5 A key issue to consider is what makes a community successful? The question is difficult to answer, simply because it depends on many factors and success metrics. Unlike most software that serves a functional purpose, online communities are strongly social. Therefore, if we keep the above ideas in mind, understanding the social aspects of people's behavior on the Internet would be highly beneficial.
Social fun
Fun is good, but too much fun has resulted in “unfunny” happenings from addiction to various forms of Internet disorders and health issues. Overuse of games has resulted in game addiction. 6 Previous studies have suggested that game addiction results in people withdrawing from social contact, and putting all their energy and efforts entirely into game achievements rather than life events. 7 Researchers believe that gamers play for a number of reasons other than just merely for fun. Ryan, a motivational psychologist, claims that “many video games can satisfy some basic psychological needs and often players continue to play because of rewards, freedom, and often a connection with other players.” 8 Such causes can be because of the problems of antisocial disorders, depression, and phobias. 8 The overuse of games has resulted in deaths.9,10 Another kind of fun could be online pornography. Various behavior patterns play a greater role for online pornography. One possible cause for online pornography is a result of high dependence on the Internet. In the nineteenth century, it was a disease; in the twentieth century, it was a cure; in the twenty-first century, it's a leisure activity.
Pornography addiction is the excessive reading, watching, or viewing of sexual content present on the Internet. 11 Many organizations and researchers have recommended content-control mechanisms or Internet filters, censorware, or Internet monitoring tools to control excessive online pornography use.
The literature review considers community and online community concepts, sociability, social support, information identity online, belonging, and social fun. On the basis of the literature review, a research question and hypothesis were posited.
Research Question and Methods
For the purpose of this investigation, a very simple qualitative study was conducted in the laboratory. Ten participants completed a task, the overall result of which is presented in Table 1. Based on the literature review and different attributes such as sociability, social support, social networking, and social fun, the following research question and hypothesis were posited:
Methods and Procedure
Qualitative research methodologies were used in the study. The cultural backgrounds were divided into two groups: Asian and Western. The number of Web pages visited was recorded, as were the behaviors of the participants. The types of anxiety shown were recorded using seven different Internet anxiety types:
1
Internet terminology anxiety – an anxiety caused by Internet terminologies. Internet time-delay anxiety – an anxiety caused by the time delay in accessing Internet content. General Internet failure – an anxiety caused by Internet connection failure. Usage anxiety – an anxiety caused by excessive use of Internet content. Experience anxiety – an anxiety caused by experience of poor or harmful content on the Internet. Environment and attraction anxiety – an anxiety caused by eye-catching applications and interfaces on the Internet. Net search anxiety – an anxiety caused by limitations in finding the desired search results on the Internet.
All the participants were given a task to complete. In the first task, participants were asked to “visit any Web pages you find interesting within a 15-minute period.” In the second task, participants were asked the same question but with a 30-minute time limit. Similarly, the third and final tasks were conducted by asking participants to “visit any random Web pages within one hour.”
Results and Discussion
The goal of the research was to study the behavior of people on the Internet. Although it is evident that “thoughts, feelings, physiology, behavior and environment interact with each other in many different ways, each playing varying roles in the different anxiety problems,” 12 it was found from the experiments, analysis, and evaluation of this research that the longer the users stayed online, the more they approached Web pages anxiously. Results are given in Table 1.
All three major tasks were successfully completed by the participants without any error. For the first task, there were no signs of any anxiety among the participants. For the second task, very few participants showed signs of anxiety. For the final task, all the participants showed signs of anxiety. The most common Web pages visited by the participants are recorded in Table 1. It was found that Western participants were more anxious than Asian participants.
Conclusions and Future Work
The limitation of the study is that not all types of anxieties were found. The small sample size results in the descriptive nature of the article. Three participants were seen to have Internet terminology anxiety. All users appeared to show higher level of anxiety while accessing Web pages on the Internet. One could possibly argue that the type of Web pages visited does not impact on users. However, more stress and anxiety can be caused by staying online for longer periods of time. The study suggests that the longer people stay online, the higher the chances of feeling anxious and stressed about the Internet content. On the other hand, the less time spent online, the lower the chances of feeling stressed and anxious. In addition, the study found that people with different cultural backgrounds showed different levels of stress and anxiety. However, hypothesis 1 was fully supported, since all users showed increased levels of anxiety when using Internet content for the three different tasks. In future studies, the same hypothesis could be tested with a greater number of users. When attempting to understand the behavior of Internet users, careful consideration of high and low levels of computer anxiety must be taken into account. Detailed data are not presented for inclusion in this paper. Future research could measure the degree of anxiety for all seven types of anxiety defined.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank my Ph.D. Supervisors, Prof. Jari Porras and Dr. Kari Heikkinen, for their support with this research.
Disclosure Statement
No competing financial interests exist.