What People Miss Out on When They’re Online

New research from Scott Wallsten, an economist at the Technology Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., attempts to show exactly what Americans are missing out on because they’re glued to their computer screens.

Wallsten limits his study to “online leisure,” or time spent online doing things like combing social networks, browsing for nonwork purposes, instant messaging, etc. (Online games — even though they can take up a lot of leisure time — are excluded because of the way the data Wallsten used are collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. Despite the data’s shortcomings, Wallsten finds that online leisure time still crowds out other activities.) Read more...