Mimi is a 35-year old white married woman, who is the mother of two sons, aged 10 and 13. She and her family live in the Castor Gardens neighborhood of Philadelphia, in the northeast section of the city. This middle class neighborhood is comprised of a diverse mix of families, many of whom are first or second generation immigrants to this country. Like many of her neighbors, Mimi is Jewish, with family roots in Eastern Europe. Other near neighbors include Asians from Cambodia, Vietnam and India, as well as African Americans.

Mimi completed two years of college, working towards a bachelor's in early childhood education and psychology. She now works 35 hours per week as a teacher's assistant in a public school kindergarten. She prepares arts and crafts projects for the children, troubleshoots in the classroom, and grades homework. Her husband also works in the field of education - he teaches geography in a public middle school. Mimi wasn't sure of the household's income, but estimated it to be between $30 and $50 thousand

Free Time: Mimi is a quite competitive and nearly obsessive game-player. She likes all kinds of games, including puzzles, board games, and hand-held games, such as GameBoy. "Anything I can grab from my kids." Whether she plays alone or with someone else, Mimi "plays a game like a kid - I want to win."

Between games, Mimi occasionally reads short pieces of fiction or non-fiction, anything quick: "things I can finish within a couple of days." She enjoys reading for the quiet, and the escape value it brings her. She likes the fact that one "can't think of anything else while you're reading."

Mimi only watches one television program, "Seventh Heaven," which she enjoys because of its wholesomeness. She watches the show with her children and afterwards discusses with them what they have seen.

Mimi keeps in touch with most of her 25 friends and relatives by seeing them socially, face-to-face, and connects with several of them at meetings or group events. She emails or uses instant messaging with over half of her social circle, and talks by phone with about ten of them. She uses "snail mail" to communicate with only a couple of friends or relatives.

Internet: Mimi has only been using computers and the internet for about a year and a half, since she and her husband purchased their first (and only) home computer. She does not use computers at work or elsewhere. Her computer usage is primarily recreational, for email and games. She connects to the internet via dial-up modem.

Emailing consumes about 4 to 6 hours of an average week for Mimi, and instant messaging takes another 2 hours. She communicates on-line with friends she knows from work and with other friends and family members, sending about 5 messages per day and receiving about the same number. She participates in a game-related e-list, and about half of her incoming and outgoing messages are related to that list. (The list began as the result of an email message Mimi sent to a newspaper. The paper created a distribution list comprised of all others who had emailed them on the same topic. Mimi did not intend for this to happen, but says she likes being part of the list now. In this way, using email has increased the number of people with whom she is in contact.)

In Mimi's opinion, the quality of contact she has with people has decreased since she began using email. She says they used to write deeper letters, but now they just share jokes or write with a "quick catch-up."

Mimi likes the "instant gratification" of Instant Messaging, and the ability to "correct something before you send it, which you can't do when you talk." On the negative side, she says it's usually hard to "IM" and surf at the same time, because Instant Messaging disturbs her concentration. "I could talk on the phone and surf more easily."

She tried a chat room once, when she won a virtual reality game (on the "Juno 3-D" site) that had a chat room component to it. After the game, the participants used the chat room to share light humor, Mimi initially found the chat room to offer a "nice wind-down after work." After a couple of weeks, however, she discontinued chat room participation. "It wasn't worth all the effort. Keeping track of conversations can be confusing." Neither her contacts with others nor the quality of her social life changed as a result of her chat room experience, but Mimi projects that, had she stayed involved in chat rooms, the quality of her social life would have gotten worse because, "I would have had no time with my husband."

Mimi did meet someone on the internet who later became a friend, outside of the internet, but the friendship only lasted a short time. She currently has one close email friend who she has never met.

Other than for email and Instant Messaging, Mimi spends between 3 and 8 hours per week on the Web, usually after her children are in bed, "so I don't have to share." Not surprisingly, Mimi's favorite websites, to which she returns day after day, are those where she plays games. Because she has them bookmarked, she had some difficulty recalling all of the web addresses, although she was able to name candystand.com and shockwave.com. Some of the games she plays frequently at these sites she describes as "virtual games, like virtual pool, bowling, and ski ball." "It's fun, entertaining. I can try new things without embarrassing myself in front of my children." As much enjoyment as it brings her, Mimi doesn't feel that using the web has changed her life much. "Without it, I'd still find a game wherever I could."

Mimi does use the web for other purposes, for example, checking the news on her Juno home page, researching remedies for family medical concerns, and helping her children do research for homework assignments. "It's cool to not have to leave the house to go to the library." She sometimes uses search engines, especially those on the Juno and Lycos sites, because "that's what came with the computer." When asked how she would use the web to obtain information on political candidates, she protested, "I don't do politics." The question revised to how she would find information about a new game, she responded that she'd "write the name of the game in a search engine, or go to the company that makes the game and push 'go.'"

It seems to Mimi that she uses the internet for about the same amount of time as other people she knows, but says,

"I use it purely for entertainment and other people use it for business, serious real-person stuff.. I use it more like a kid would."

Mimi feels comfortable with her computer, confident that she can figure out on her own some problems she might have with software, and with helpful resources in her children, and other friends and family, if she needs advice. She knows how to download a file from the web, but not to send a file to someone else, and was not familiar with the term "portal."

Interviewer: Carolyn Rahe