Sad and lonely in cyberspace? No, not really. Technology & Sociology7/23/2001; 3:22:23 PM 'A new, longer follow-up from a study that linked Web use to poor mental health — heavily publicized three years ago — shows that most bad effects have disappeared.'"Either the Internet has changed, or people have learned to use it more constructively, or both," says the study leader, psychologist Robert Kraut of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.'And now we see that the Internet benefits psychology as much as other sciences... thanks to the "Internet Time" phenomenon, faulty studies from 1998, corrected by follow-up studies in 2001, can dodge the (*cough cough*) psychologically challenging issues of admitting the original study may have been flawed. (Surely that's at least a possibility, nyet?)The previous study is discussed in this this Salon article from 1998:'"Sad, Lonely World Discovered in Cyberspace": The front-page headline in Sunday's New York Times conjured an image of intrepid explorers trekking to the edge of a precipice to win a precious glimpse of some remote tribe. It's a romantic, attention-getting picture, which is no doubt what attracted Times editors to the wording. But -- as so often is the case with media portraits of Net culture -- the truth is far more mundane.'