Quesitons: Health & Social Support

Social isolation and Coping mechanism from social spaces: real-life and virtual.

In the conclusion of HutchWorld article, it mentioned that Internet access and ... had a meaningful impact on the quality of people's lives under circumstances of stress and social isolation.

I found this is quite true for being an international student who studies abroad and during the transition stage of culture shock. The new technology like instant message, skype, blog, facebook or online photo albums have helped a lot for me and many IS to keep connection with family and friends back in the home town.

On the other hand, one article by Kraut et al. suggested that "Internet use is associated with decreases in face-to-face interactions, and increases in loneliness and depression (Farnham et al.)"

I also agree with this point. In EDCI615, we have a chance to observe people's interaction on campus. The class was divided into about 10 groups and went to diverse locations of the Purdue campus to observe how people behave in a certain location. In the end, we found a similarity in all the cases is that people are highly engaged with technology like mp3, cell phone, and laptop. There was very little social interaction among people/acquaintance. And the instructor shared us her observation that in her time, it's easily to see couples walking hand in hand on campus. Now, it's not so common. Technology seems to reduce the face-to-face contact and bring more physical distance.


So I am just wondering. For reducing the isolation and depression, people nowadays are wondering to seek comforts among the real and virtual spaces. How can we wisely/healthily balance our involving between them? Or the question should go back to the more fundamental one that is when and how an individual feel social-isolated and depressed? What features or functions/mechanism in a social space or community that can bring supports and comforts to each other?

What are the people supports and scaffolding mechanism in computer-mediated social support in health domain?

In the CHESS article, I found a lot of connection from that. Recently, my mother is during the therapy of skull bone cancer. It's a big challenge and turning point to our family. Our family is more tight to each other to face the critical moment in our lives. We want to get more information about how to decrease the pain from the chemo- and radiant- therapy process. But the information we gain from the medical doctor is very limited. We feel helpless. Then we tend to seek supports from other resources like published books or friends' supports. The internet becomes a good resource for patient empowerment. So far when I googled the website in Taiwan, I found most of the cancer websites are static text-based and one-way communication. In the US, there seem to provide more some online social support community who publish information or forum for patients and caregivers to exchange emotions and tacit knowledge under the careful supports from a certain medical or research groups.

In the CHESS article, the text-based and anonymous computer-mediated communication gave the participants a sense of "unconditional acceptance" which free them from the social context cues. It's something I believe during a stage of healing process will help the participants a lot to process emotions, retrieve energy and recollect confident to come in back the real life after the recovery.
Compare the CHESS article and the HutchWorld, the research method and report writing styles is very different. I found more connection from the CHESS and recognize that the technology functions well in this case is actually supported by many people supports rather than relying solely on technology. My question is what are the key components of the people supports or the scaffolding design that make the CHESS workable?