Imagine this: once a happy child with a lot of friends, little Jack has started spending many hours per day on social networking sites such as Facebook, which has turned him into a pale asocial freak. Oh, if only he’d never touched that cursed box we call the computer, he’d be a healthy young man now!

This is the picture we’ve been fed a lot by the media (did you see the movie Gamer? I rest my case), but according to a study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, it’s simply not true.

Quite the contrary: online activities such as social networking, sending e-mails and blogging can lead to larger, and (perhaps even more importantly) more diverse social networks. From the study:

“Social media activities are associated with several beneficial social activities, including having discussion networks that are more likely to contain people from different backgrounds. For instance, frequent internet users, and those who maintain a blog are much more likely to confide in someone who is of another race. Those who share photos online are more likely to r