Brief ramble about the apparent challenges of characterizing life online

I think it's telling that the First Monday exchange we read for this week (1, 2, 3) took place in 2009, back when smartphones were much less ubiquitous* in the U.S. than they are today:

It's telling because, even still in 2009, I think the prevailing image of Facebook use was of someone sitting at a desktop or laptop computer primarily focused on a browser window. However, in the second quarter of 2016, 1.03 billion of Facebook's 1.13 billion daily active users and 1.57 billion of its 1.71 billion monthly active users accessed the site via mobile at least some of the time. 

Even if the general public doesn't have these stats at their finger tips, I think it's safe to say that the average Facebook user in the popular imagination is now popping in and out of the app via mobile rather than cooped up in a dorm room spending hours at a time on the service. 

Indeed, I believe the informal, non-scientific audiences that received Karpinski's study with such a gush of enthusiasm** were picturing Facebook use as potentially replacing study time: "The kids these days are on the computer instead of at their study group." Today, such popular interpretation would almost certainly be about the interruption of study time, in situ, via mobile: "The kids these days are on their smartphones while they're at their study group."

That these studies would likely have been framed, executed, and received very differently today underscores the challenge of research and even intuitive understanding of what Kietzmann and colleagues rightly describe as both "ecology" and "jungle." The pace of change and the complexity of the system really matter. I think it's important that we bring realistic expectations to studies of online behavior and especially its effects. I also think we are wise to bear in mind the moral panic that seems to always accompany technological change in the social sphere (those of you in MSTU 4016 know what I mean).  

I'm not sure what conclusion(s) I have to offer here about the nature of online life or the effect of social media use on academic performance. I think both sets of authors are ultimately right that "setting the record straight" in some sort of comprehensive and definitive way is incredibly challenging. I wonder about the methodological limitations of any psychometric study within the broad systemic framework Kitezmann and colleagues lay out and would like to learn more about current thinking in this area. 

Perhaps most of all, I wonder how the research will keep up with the changes to the system, especially given the temptation toward rushed work that this First Monday exchange illustrates so vividly. 

*Note that this data is for all adults; it was presumably higher for college-age students throughout this time, but I couldn't easily find support of that.

** That gush, incidentally, certainly seems to be what brings out the rancor in Pasek, more, and Hargittai's critique.