This research examines how household computing and the Internet are changing the social and psychological well being of the American family, and compares the influence of these new technologies on households with that of older ones--telephones and televisions. The research objectives are (1) to determine whether the early results showing that use of the Internet decreases psychological and social well being generalizes across samples, Internet services, and time, (2) to identify mechanism for these effects, and (3) to compare the impact of different patterns of household information technology use. Data will come from a national three-wave, panel survey, allowing one to examine how the amount of television, telephone, computing, and Internet people use at one time predict later changes in their social involvement and psychological well being at a subsequent time. The survey will be supplemented with a quasi-experiment, in which a subsample of respondents who have computers but no Internet access will be randomly assigned free Internet access instead of a cash payments to participate in the survey. Results will have implications both for emerging policy debate about universal access to the Internet and for the design of socially responsible Internet services.
