The social impact of the Internet has been under close scrutiny for many years. One issue that has generated a great deal of debate among researchers is the effect of Internet use on interpersonal connectivity (Sproull & Kiesler, 1991; Uslaner, 2000).

Three major conflicting findings have been reported:
Internet use decreases social ties,
Internet use increases social ties, and
Internet use neither decreases nor increases social ties (Wellman, Haase, Witte, & Hampton, 2001).

The current debate over the impact of Internet use on social ties can be traced back to the publication of Howard Rheingold's (1993) influential book on "virtual community," where the Internet was described as capable of bringing strangers together to form intimate online networks. Rheingold's positive assessment of the Internet conflicted with the negative views expressed by other scholars who regarded online social networks as "the illusion of community" or "categorical identities" that are......

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Title: ..In The Era Of Computer Mediated Communication, Distance No Longer Matters
Approximate Word Count: 992
Approximate Pages: 4 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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