Socially speaking, the telephone both gives and takes away. When a fire in a switching center unexpectedly cut telephone service on the Lower East Side of Manhattan for three weeks in 1975, two-thirds of the people who lost service reported that being without a telephone made them feel isolated, but one-third reported that they visited other people in person more frequently. In other words, the telephone appears to reduce both loneliness and face-to-face socializing.75
