Your observations are right on target, Katherine. Whether or not people feel lonely and isolated online depends a great deal on how the environment is designed. Also, the social isolation research is pointing to the fact that some people rely on online socializing as their ONLY way of relating to people, which results in their being isolated from the in-person world. I believe the optimal situation is when a person integrates online and offline living.... which in the case of distance education means that at some point it would be very good for people to meet each other in-person. http://www.rider.edu/users/suler/psycyber/integrate.html
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