That the internet has reduced the community involvement of youth

My opponent claims that I must prove that the internet, as opposed to its use, reduces youth community involvement, a sort of semantic twisting of the resolution. This is not only a squirrel as it goes against the clear spirit of the motion, but it's also false. Chocolate does make you fat, digestion is merely the mechanism that allows it to do so. It is the same with the internet. Furthermore, the two are not seperate concepts, for there would be no internet if nobody used it, just as there would be no chocolate if nobody ate it (why else make chocolate?) so the internet cannot be examined independantly of its use. Therefore, it is logically necessary to take the meaning of the internet in the context that it is being used. This debate is about whether that influence has been one, among the youth demographic, that has reduced community involvement. Our communities have changed from being based on interpersonal relationships to parasocial relationships, because the internet creates the illusion of face-to-face communication by mass means [1]. The effect of this is that while internet relationships are inherently parasocial, they are constructed to appear interpersonal. Most debates on this site, for example, are written more or less as if we were speaking face-to-face, but really we are not. Here we must distinguish between primary and secondary relationships. In a secondary relationship, one only knows the other person on a very few dimensions. In a primary relationship, one knows the other person on many dimensions. This is the kind of relationship face-to-face communication creates. Research has shown that the internet increases our number of secondary relationships - but at the same time, it reduces our primary relationships, as we start spending more time on the net and less with people [2]. For example, internet users communicate with family more infrequently [3], and in most cases, lose social contact sufficiently to become depressed [4]. As two researchers put it, "virtual communities are spatially liberated, socially ramified, topically fused, and psychologically detached, with a limited liability. In this sense, if we understand community to include the close, emotional, holistic ties of Gemeinschaft, then the virtual community is not true community" [5]. Because we do not engage in higher-level communication, we become increasingly disconnected from our community. With their minds still developing, young people are especially vulnerable to these things. There are, additionally, certain youth with issues that mean the internet substitutes community involvement even more so than it does for the average young person. The biggest one is the fact that youth are undergoing a tough, transitional period in their lives (such as the development of non-family interpersonal relationships) that, for many of them, may require a "coping mechanism" [7]. Because the internet is completely virtualised and parasocial, it actually does work as a coping mechanism, but because it makes them feel better than anything else in the "real" world, it becomes addictive. That creates depersonalisation and antisocialisation [6]. Furthermore, many people have argued that the influence of the internet is not building real-world communities, and indeed can detract from them [8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14]. The internet is a substitute for real-world concerns, building such fantastically-named structures as "Disneylands" [11] and "Pseudo-communities" [10] instead that substituted real-world involvement. Why hang out at the town hall when you can hang out at the modern-day simulation of a medieval town hall, "Facebook"!? These might be rooted in real-world ideas, but are little more than a simulation or illusion. Youth experienced declines in civic engagement, and were particularly disenfranchised from their own communities [15]. Writing about community involvement, one author called the situation in 2000 a "civic crisis" [16]. Since then, internet use has gone up by about 15% [17], while rates of volunteering (a good indicator for the degree of community involvement) did increase slightly until about 2005, but have since dropped down again [17]. The civic crisis has clearly not ended. That's why celebrity tweets are now often more important than celebrity speeches. Older people are also becoming increasingly disconnected from their physically proxmiate communities, for the same reasons. This affects youth because older people are usually the ones who create community events and organisations, and because it makes it harder for youth to get widespread support for their own movements. Additionally, because some young people are becoming disconnected from the community, youth become typecast in the eyes of older people. This phenomenon, known as "adultism", is the assumption held by many adults that they are or know better than young people, which in turn leads to psychological problems in the youth who are rejected by adults [19]. That concludes my opening statement. I look forward to hearing my opponent's case. References 1- Jensen, J.F. (1998). ‘Interactivity' - Tracking a New Concept in Media and Communication Studies. Nordicorn Review, 19(1): 185-204. 2- Bollier, D. (ed.) (1995). The future of community and personal identity in the coming electronic culture. Washington DC:Aspen Institute 3- Kraut, R., Mukhopadhyay, T., Szczypula, J., Kiesler, S., & Scherlis, W. (1998). Communication and information: Alternative uses of the Internet in households. In Proceedings of the CHI 98 (pp. 368-383). New York: ACM. 4- LaRose, R., Eastin, M. S., & Gregg, J. (2001). Reformulating the Internet paradox: Social cognitive explanations of Internet use and depression. Journal of Online Behavior, 1/2[Online]. Available: http://www.behavior.net... 5- Driskell, R. B. and Lyon, L. (2002), Are Virtual Communities True Communities? Examining the Environments and Elements of Community. City & Community, 1(4): 373–390. doi: 10.1111/1540-6040.00031 6- Beutel, M.E., Brï¿½hler, E., Glaesmer, H., Kuss, D., Wï¿½lfling, K., and Mï¿½ller, K.W. (2011). Regular and Problematic Leisure-Time Internet Use in the Community: Results from a German Population-Based Survey. CyberPsychology, Behavior & Social Networking, 14(5): 291-296. doi: 10.1089/cyber.2010.0199 7- Chagnon F. (2007). Coping mechanisms, stressful events and suicidal behavior among youth admitted to juvenile justice and child welfare services. Suicide Life Threat Behav, 37(4): 439-52. 8- Kiesler, S., Siegel, H. and McGuire, T.W. (1984). Social psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication. American Psychologist, 39(10): 1123-1134 9- Gergen, K. (1991). The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life. New York: HarperCollins. 10-Beniger, J. (1988). The Personalization of mass media and the growth of the pseudo-community. Communications Research, 14(3): 352-71. 11-Baudrillard, Jean. (1983). Simulations. (Paul Foss, Paul Patton, and Philip Beitchman, Trans.). New York: Semiotest(e). (1983). 12-Turkle, S. (1996). Virtuality and its discontents: Searching for community in cyberspace. The American Prospect. 24, (Winter 1996), 50–57. 13-Stoll, C. (1995). Silicon snake oil: Second thoughts on the information highway. New York: Doubleday. 14-Slouka, M. (1995). War of the worlds: Cyberspace and the high-tech assault on reality. New York: Basic Books. 15-Carpini, M.X.D. (2000). Youth, Civic Engagement, and the New Information Environment. Political Communication, 17(4): 341-349. doi: 10.1080/10584600050178942 16-Putnam, R.D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon & Schuster. 17-Pew Internet & American Life Project. (2010). Updated: Change in internet access by age group. Retrieved September 1, 2012, from http://pewinternet.org... 18-Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (2011). Youth Volunteering in the States: 2002 to 2009. Retrieved September 1, 2012, from http://www.civicyouth.org... 19-Checkoway, B. (2011). What is youth participation? Children and Youth Services Review, 33(2), pp 340-345, doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.09.017.