The Lord "set limits" on the sea at the time of creation, we hear in this Sunday's reading from the Book of Job. Families will need to set limits on the amount of time they spend online if they hope to spend more time together, said a new study, which suggests that a sharp decline in family togetherness coincides with a rise in Internet use and the popularity of social networks.

The Annenberg Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California reported this week that 28 percent of the Americans it interviewed last year said they have been spending less time with members of their households. That's nearly triple the 11 percent who said that in 2006.

Michael Gilbert, a senior fellow at the center, said people report spending less time with family members just as social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are booming, along with the importance people place on them.

Five-year-old Facebook's active user base, for example, has surged to more than 200 million, up from 100 million last August. Meanwhile more people say they are worried about how much time kids and teenagers spend online.

In 2000, when the center began its annual surveys on Americans and the Internet, only 11 percent of respondents said that family members under 18 were spending too much time online. By 2008 that number grew to 28 percent.

In the first half of the decade, people reported spending an average of 26 hours per month with their families. By last year, however, that shared time had dropped by more than 30 percent, to about 18 hours.

"Most people think of the Internet and [our] digital future as boundless, and I do, too," Gilbert said. But, he added, "it can't be a good thing that families are spending less face-to-face time together. Ultimately it leads to less cohesive and less communicative families."

Source: An article by Barbara Ortutay for Associated Press