Category: Communication in Relationships

Facebook is basically a social networking website. People use this site after a free registration upon which a platform to connect with other people online is availed to them. Users have accounts into the system and they can exchange a lot of items such as personal pictures, short messages and any other electronic item. Facebook makes it possible for users to come up with profiles that describes them. Facebook has a provision to make users connect which other by requesting friendship. These profiles are commonly identified by users as “walls”. It is in this “walls” that users exchange information, (Abram, 2007). People interact with one another through different ways some of which may be out of sight. In today’s modern world, people who have an access to internet services express their relationship on Facebook. Such relationship can be associated with either of the following; common ancestry, romance, regular business interaction or basic friendship. Set up of such relationships can surely be socially affected either directly or indirectly by this social website.

Facebook affect it users in many ways; socially, politically and even economically. This piece of work describes the social impact of Facebook on relationship. Facebook bring together its users. Lonely individuals can rekindle happiness into their faces when they connect with their distant friends. Apart from sharing messages and dumb pictures of friends, there is an item provided by the Facebook that makes conversation more appealing and realistic. This item is referred to as “videocall”. Users are able to exchange their experiences in real time through “videocall,” (Burke M, 2010). This drive a sense of being closer into the participating users and ultimately happiness and joy is achieved. Economic technicality can separate can separate couples especially in situations where one is transferred to work in distant places. Facebook has the ability to keep such long distant relationship alive. This is made only possibly when both parties can access these services with ease.

On the account of social effects, Facebook play a handy role in building new relationships. Profiles of unfamiliar users on Facebook are made available to other users depending on the privacy policies set by the account users. Users can send friend request to new users and when the request is accepted, a relationship is created. These new relationships at some cases lead to marriages when the traits and personalities of the partners are compatible. However, these new relationships can be also socially dangerous. Some of the Facebook users are never honest to display their true nature on their “wall”. Consequently, scenarios to be introduced into a socially impaired behavior is very high. It is therefore advisable to carefully scrutinize the type of people whose friend request is accepted. Sometimes curiosity may tempt users to befriend with strangers. For as long as there is no chance of contacting this people physically, then one can attempt such relationships. Otherwise, strangers can be dangerous when not handled with caution. In addition, not all friend requests are accepted and users whose friend requests are rejected may be subjected into psychological difficulties.

In contrary, Facebook can be dangerous to the existing relationships. Facebook is a tool to connect to people but there is an evidence to show that Facebook is also a tool to break relationships. Majority of celebrities usually intensify their differences in relationship by making it public when they post on their “wall”. This is sometime accompanied by disgusting comments from other users which accelerates the breakup. Shame and lost confidence made public alone is a recipe of social destruction. One can actually loose self esteem in such circumstances especially when their real weaknesses are made public through this social site (Light, Ben & McGrath, Kathy, 2010). There are few cases of reunited relationships but majority remain broken and shuttered beyond repair. Facebook play a role in this because it has an optional provision to make public any item posted on any user’s “wall”.

Moreover, Facebook can improve and mold relationships. There are good examples of successful relationships over this social media that can be the mirror to other struggling relationships. Good interactions, healthy social life and well-mannered family traits actually is worth being envied. These relationships are posted by friends on their “wall” and can be seen over by other Facebook friends. Apart from this, there are Facebook pages that offer adolescence education, interpersonal relations, family life education and generally sociology in a community set up. Facebook offer pages on their websites to organization that provide such services. These organization invite any Facebook user to like their pages upon which services are made available to them. Therefore, any Facebook user who read and implement good virtues on these pages can ultimately add a supplement to their relationship (Carpenter, 2013). To be clearer on this, users are advised to only pick an item that is most appropriate to their relationship. It is very unfair to a relationship when one partner strain to get the very best supplements into their relationship yet there are better alternatives that are less equal and manageable.

To sum up, Facebook has got two sides of the coin and its influence is entirely dependent on the users’ discretion. Social impacts of Facebook on relationships are real and they are manifested in our today digital lifestyle. User are therefore advised to distinguish gold from stone. Every step one makes through this social media is always a remarkable change and are mostly irreversible. It will be a justice to your society and you when only socially relevant items are embraced from Facebook. Facebook should be of greater benefit when it can impact its users’ relationships positively.

References

1. Abram, C. (2007, February 23). Have a taste . The facebook blog. Retrieved March 1, 2007, from http://blog.facebook/blog.php?post=2245132130
2. Burke M, M. C. (2010). Social network activities and social being. Proceedings of SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems .
3. Carpenter, B. (2013). Family in Contex. New York, USA: Routledge.
4. Light, Ben & McGrath, Kathy. (2010). Ethics and social networking sites : a disclosive analysis of Facebook. Brisbane: Emerald Group Publishing Ltd. Retrieved from emeraldinsight.com

Methodology

A survey was done by using Google Forms. The form was made and circulated over Facebook pages, WhatsApp Groups, and Twitter. This study’s sample consisted of social media users aged 18 to 30. From November 1 to 30, 2021. Everyone who wanted to participate was welcome to do so. The sample size for this study was 100 people, with 71 completing the survey.

The following questions were asked:

Section A:

This section consisted of questions related to one’s self-esteem. One had to respond by selecting a number on a scale of 1 – 5; with 5 being affirmative and 1 being negative.

1. I believe that I am a valuable person, at least on an equal footing with others.
2. I believe I possess several positive characteristics.
3. Overall, I am inclined to believe that I am a failure.
4. I can accomplish most things as well as most other individuals.
5. I don’t think I have much to be proud of
6. I have a positive attitude toward myself
7. I am generally satisfied with myself
8. I wish I could have more respect for myself
9. I surely feel useless at times
10. At times, I believe I am no good at all

Section B:

This section consisted of short response questions regarding one’s relationships.

1. How well do people cater to your requirements?
2. How pleased are you with your relationships in general?
3. How frequently do you wish you hadn’t become involved with the people in your social circle?
4. Do you have any issues in your relationships?
5. Are you able to open up to people very easily?
6. Do you have at least one true non-exploitative relationship?
7. Do you feel jealous of other people’s achievements?
8. Do you have negative emotions towards the posts or content put out by people in your social circle on social media?

Section C:

This section consisted of short response questions regarding one’s social media usage.

1. Why do you utilize social media?
2. How much time do you spend on social media every day?
3. How much time do you spend on social media in one go?
4. Do you find yourself unnecessarily scrolling your feed in a very subconscious or passive manner? If yes, why do you think you do so?
5. Does your use of social media influence your emotions? If so, how?
6. How does your use of social media affect your relationships? If so, how?
7. Describe what it would be like to go a week without using your cell phone or accessing any social networking sites.

Results and Discussion

This study had a sample size of 71 people. Few questions were objective but most questions were short responses or subjective We had two hypotheses in our minds before going through the responses and deducing the results. They were:

• More time spent on social media results in a decline in the overall quality of the user’s interpersonal interactions.
• Greater time spent on social media will result in a decline in the user’s overall emotional well-being.
• We went through all the responses and tried to deduce conclusions that either supported our hypotheses or rejected them.

The responses we got confirmed that people who spent more time on social media had lower-quality interpersonal interactions, therefore indicating that the 1st hypothesis was fully supported. The more time an individual spends on social media, the lower the quality of their connections This complements the findings of Kerkhof et al. (2011), who discovered that those with high compulsive Internet use had lower offline relationship quality. In our study, people who had a social media use of more than 2 hours reported having unfulfilling relationships. Another interesting thing that we deduced from the responses was that very few people (irrespective of their social media usage), to be precise – just 2 out of 71 claimed to have a true non-exploitative relationship. This was quite shocking and troubling considering humans being social animals are not able to have a single true relationship.

The responses that we got also confirmed that social media does play a role in the user’s unfavorable feelings and moods. This supported our 2nd hypothesis. This demonstrated that individuals who spent more time on social media had a lower level of emotional well-being.

Participants who spent 30 minutes or more on social media at a go showed the highest drop in emotional well-being.

Coming to the responses to the question “ Describe what it would be like to go a week without using your cell phone or accessing any social networking sites”, the majority of participants, roughly 67 percent had responses which more or less said that they would love to experience a digital detox of this form, but they aren’t ready and experience FOMO before taking such decisions.

From our study, we can observe that when a person spends an inordinate amount of time on social media, they are likely to suffer diminished emotional well-being, which contributes to a deterioration in the quality of their relationships. Long lengths of time spent on social media hurt a person’s emotions. After a person has finished using social media, they take their unpleasant emotions with them, which influences how the user interacts with others offline. This encounter is not always bad, but the quality of that interaction is lower than it could have been because the user’s negative emotions from their social media use influenced that interaction. Seo et al. (2016) discovered comparable findings in their study, demonstrating that a person who developed a cell phone addiction suffered higher despair, which hurt their social ties with friends.

Conclusion

This study looked at how the use of social media affects the user’s emotional well-being as well as their interpersonal interactions. It is natural for us as social beings to want to interact with those around us, and social media has certainly made this simpler. However, as this study has demonstrated, social networking is not without its drawbacks. The qualitative findings of this study, which are supported by quantitative data, give persuasive evidence that social media use has more negative repercussions than benefits. The data suggest that unless we take appropriate steps to become more aware of how our social media use affects us and what we can do to address those issues, we will likely develop negative habits and plunge ourselves into a state of deeper emotional distress by passively allowing our health and relationships to deteriorate.

This study verifies recent research on uses and gratifications theory, social media effects, and relationship difficulties, but it also provides additional data that may extend previous research beyond previous bounds to demonstrate that social media play a part in the development of addictive behaviors. Social media is likely generating a society of junkies. The question that every social media user should ask is, ‘How can we determine if our social media use is excessive, or if it has become an addiction for us?’ This may necessitate taking a break from social media for a short period and taking stock of our lives to better see what needs social media has been gratifying and then deciding whether to continue using social media to fill those needs or to seek out alternative sources of gratification that are more lasting.

Future research should look into how addictive behaviors are formed or reinforced as a result of excessive social media use. Future studies should look into the optimal amount of time spent on social media. Is there a healthy balance between using social media excessively and not using it at all? If there is, what is it, and can limiting the amount of time we spend on social media influence whether or not it becomes an addiction?

One final perspective for this research study is that social media are still relatively new to the world, and as this phenomenon develops, only ongoing research and time will be able to discern what is genuinely happening to mankind in the next few years.