There's a professor at the University of Toronto in Canada who has come up with a term to describe the way a lot of North Americans interact these days. And now a big research study confirms it. Professor Barry Wellman's term is 'networked individualism'. It's not the easiest concept to grasp. In fact, the words seem to contradict each other. How can we be individualistic and networked at the same time? You need other people for network. Here's what he means. Until the Internet and e-mail came along, our social network involved flesh-and-blood relatives, friends, neighbors, and colleagues. Some of the interaction was by phone, but it was still voice to voice, person to person, in real life. But the latest study confirms that for a lot of people, electronic interaction through the computer has replaced a great deal of social activities and person-to-person interaction. Some people worry that the Internet is turning us into isolated people who shut out other people in favor of a false world on computer screens. To the contrary, the study discovered that the Internet connects us with more real people than expected—helpful people who can give advice on careers, medical problems, raising children, and choosing a school or college. About 60 million Americans told the researcher that the Internet plays an important or crucial role in helping them deal with major life decisions. So we networked individuals are pretty tricky: we're keeping more to ourselves, while at the same time reaching out to more people, all with just the click of a computer mouse! The term 'networked individualism' is used to refer to______.