Lily is a 30-year old white never-married female, who lives alone in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia, in a rented apartment over a pharmacy. Just this month she completed work on her master's degree in Counseling Psychology, and has already begun working towards a doctorate in adult education. Lily works 50 hours per week and earns about $40 thousand at two part-time jobs. Her primary job (30 hrs./wk) is as the educational coordinator in a non-profit organization. She coordinates early childhood training programs, and provides training and technical assistance to day care providers. Her second part-time job is that of the after-school program director at a private K-12 level school.

Free Time: Lily likes to read in her free time, and loves to go for walks at the beach when she spends time at a friend's shore house. She also enjoys the "social aspects" of listening to music, dancing and "having a good time" with her friends. Watching television, especially "The X-Files," "Friends," and "Law and Order, Special Victims Unit," is a way for Lily to "suspend reality" and fantasize about "the life I don't lead."

Lily counts 25 to 30 friends or relatives with whom she keeps in touch. She sends Christmas cards to at least 25 of them, and sees just over half of them face-to- face, socially or at meetings. There are a few she talks with by phone, and a few with whom she exchanges emails.

Internet Use: Lily has used the internet since 1997, when she was exposed to it at a previous job, but she remains a light internet user. Her primary use of the internet is for emailing for about 4 hours per week. She spends another hour per week on the web at more general sites. Lily sends 10 email messages per day, the same number she receives. Nearly all of these are personal, one-to-one messages, exchanged mainly with coworkers and professional associates. She once had a sort of job interview by email with someone who later became a business associate. Lily says that, since she began using email, the number of people with whom she is in contact has increased. She reports that, with work contacts, "...instead of giving me their phone numbers, they give me their email addresses." Emailing is easier than phoning and gets a "quicker response time." Lily finds that contact is made and maintained more often by email than by phone. She doesn't think, however, that the use of email has changed the quality of her contact. "It's still the same kind of communication - that hasn't changed."

Lily has used instant messaging a few times, but finds it invasive and doesn't like it. "It's like someone walking up when you're working and starting to talk to you, whether you're paying attention or not." She has not used chat rooms or other interactive aspects of the web.

While Lily qualified to be interviewed on this survey because she said she had used the internet for at least an hour last week, her memory of that usage, outside of her email usage, was somewhat hazy. She states that, "It's rare that I go to the web. I do use it, but it's not that big a deal for me." She had difficulty naming the main sites she goes to, saying, "I'm not a regular user. I don't have any usual sites." She did report that she often goes to her school's website to pay a bill or to register for classes. Besides the site for the school at which she is currently a student, Lily seems to use the web almost exclusively to visit other educational sites, for information pertaining to her education coordinator job.

In her opinion, Lily uses the internet less than others she knows.

"Some use the web as their first source of information, and I rarely use it that way. I'm just not that comfortable with it. I don't think of it first. I'm not sure why."

Lily uses a computer both at work and at home, and occasionally takes a laptop with her on business trips for email. Her computer use at her job is limited to strictly business purposes, mainly because everyone in the non-profit office shares the one computer there. "It's not on my desk, and [personal use] would be too obvious." She also says slow speed is a reason for her light web use.

Lily uses her AOL search engine when she needs to search, and was cautious in naming yahoo as another search engine. She did not recognize the term, "portal." She does not think of herself as a skilled computer user, noting she does not know how to download a file from the internet. She turns to others, such as teachers, friends, fellow students or co-workers, for help in case of software trouble.

Interviewer: Carolyn Rahe