Today people are more connected than ever, the internet and social media have opened Pandora’s box for interpersonal communications. It is hard to imagine our lives before the internet and cell phones. If we take a moment to really think about how we communicate today, most of us would immediately think of our preferred type of social media or our cell phone. Social media is a phenomenon that has changed the way society communicates. This study created an online survey to investigate the relationship between social media and in-person communications.
A sample of 42 participants, mostly students from Green Grass University, answered a two part questionnaire, the first part reported the number of hours spent using various types of social media each week. The social media chosen for the survey included the most popular forms of social media being used today. The second part asked the participants to answer a series of scenario type questions where they could choose their answers based on their personal preference when using social media for communications.
The results of this study did not support the hypothesis and showed no statistically significant relationship between social media and in-person communications. However, the data does show a trend of negative significance, as in-person communications goes down while social media goes up, this finding warrants further research. Key words: social media, interpersonal, communications, in-person The Relationship between Social Media and In-Person Communications
The Essay on Social Media Communication – Risk and Benefit
You’re dammed if you do, and you’re dammed if you don’t. Communication in the 21st Century has given corporations a global audience, using the ever growing, and easily accessible interaction of social media. Like many other corporate leaders, Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn accepted his trusted Chief Marketing Officer’s suggestion to use “Twitter” as a form of communication, which could be used to ...
Little more than 20 years ago households were introduced to the “Internet”. There was no way to know how this electronic wave of communication would impact our everyday life, and how we would soon be interacting with friends, family, and co-workers. Today we communicate with a variety of electronic devices via social media applications. Face-to-face communications and the land-line telephone seem to no longer be the primary means of communicating with others. Today we maintain relationships thru various types of social media.
When researchers try to understand the enormous role social media now plays in our everyday lives, it leads to a question being examined in a number of ways by many researchers across the globe; is there a relationship between social media and in-person communications? Studies suggest that the use of the internet and social media, instead of in-person communications can have negative social outcomes (Hwang, 2011).
Cell phones have helped perpetuate the use of social media and the decrease of in-person communications.
The heavy use of today’s Personal Electronic Devices (PEDs) are used to connect family, children, friends, managers, co-workers, customers, and almost anyone who we once were only able to contact in- person or by the telephone. The preference of social media over in-person communications seems to have grown exponentially during the past 20 years. The relationship between the different types of social media and how we verbally interact continues to intrigue researchers. Today, almost anywhere we look and go, we will see someone surfing the net with a PED. The internet has enabled socialization to grow far beyond the yesteryears of Ma’Bell.
Research studies are now providing insight on how face-to-face conversations compare with telephone use and social media among college students. In a two-part study by Baym, Zhang, and Lin (2004) they had students keep communication diaries for several days. Each student was asked to log how often they engaged in face-to-face conversations during that time frame. They then compared these findings with each student’s local and long-distance social circles, along with the types of media used to interact. The goal was to see how social media and everyday interpersonal relations compared to one another.
The Term Paper on Effects of Social Media
... values regarding social communication. The person connected via social media is perceived as participating in a social interaction, but communicating by social mediums ... is correlated to the substitution of social medium for face-to-face communication. Social media has further effects related to individual’s ... attic is “cool” because you have to type each letter by itself. You have to know ...
It was found that email and face- to-face interactions were the most common choice for social interactions, whether or not the personal contact was local or long distance. This suggests that the social media and the in-person communications could be complimentary, not negative to one another. More and more studies are showing that the different type of communications; in- person, phone, email, texting, and social media tend to overlap (Van Cleemput, 2010).
A poll of 15 year-old students in Belgium was asked to answer a series of questions from a sociometric rating; what are the loseness of friendship levels, where very good friendships equal strong ties.
They were also asked questions of a judgmental nature regarding popularity of students and then they were asked how often they communicated with students face-to-face, via email, text, instant message, in-person, and on the telephone. The preferred type of social media used to communicate appeared to be situational. This study considered the social network of teens, and how their use of social media formed patterns, while taking into account the strength of the friendship with whom they communicated.
Face-to-face communication was preferred for interaction among the weakest friendships. Face-to-face was also high in the strongest of friendship connections, however, the stronger the friendship the more likely all types of social media would be used to communicate. This could suggest that there is a higher level of comfort with personal information being shared in closer friendships. The trend showing is that the use of multiple types of social media to communicate heighten and increase social interactivity when the interpersonal relationship is closer.
Farber, Shafron, Hamadani, Wald and Nitzburg (2012) approach the social media and in-person communications from a stand point that the applications and availability of various types of contact may not be where our concern for the negative side-effects should be focused. The concern for how children will learn to interact socially in face-to-face encounters could be the least of our problems. In fact, more and more studies are showing that the increase of social media is actually having a positive effect on in-person communications.
The Term Paper on The Effect of Social Media on Society
... that,social media also aids in many other factors : Communication: social media offers enhanced internal and/or external communication • ... University’s Imagining the Internet Center conducted a study on “The Future of Online Socializing” ... social skills. People become dependent on the technology and forget how to socialise in face-to-face context. The online personality of a person ...
People are not choosing to use social media over in-person communications, instead the access to social media seems to be enhancing our in-person communications and keeping us in closer contact. What was thought to be lost in translation, expressions, verbal and physical cues with social media isn’t necessarily a negative outcome. What they feel should be considered and studied further are the misuses of these technologies, and the ease with which things like cyber-bullying, sexting and Internet addiction are so easily set in motion.
Depression and anxiety stemming from the intentional mental anguish that can be widely spread through the use of PEDs should give us even greater concern. This generation is susceptable to a new form of bullying, one that can invade your home giving children no repreive from torment they might be experiencing when at school or other locations O’Keefe and Clarke-Pearson, (2011).
If a child is being harassed at school and that carries over into their home life, via social media, how do we monitor, control, and protect children from these types of communications?
Better yet, how will we know they are happening? So, (Farber, Shafron, Hamadani, Wald and Nitzburg, 2012) focused a study on technologically mediated communications (TMC) and the different ways they are used by children and young adults. They surveyed over 500 people 25 years old and younger. They wanted to investigate how the choice of TMC and the ease with which each TMC is used, along with emotional consequences compared. Using a Likertscale rating, they included in- person talking, telephone, texting, emailing, instant messaging, Twitter, and Facebook.
Findings showed that texting and face-to-face were the most convenient choices for contact, with talking on the phone a close third. They also reported that social media like Twitter and Facebook had the lowest ratings, and both of those social media scored high when asked about the levels of insincerity and phony communications incurred. Once again, we see that face-to-face interaction remains strong. While face-to-face interaction remains strong today, what is the cost incurred with our interpersonal relationships, given the influx of social media? Technology can not replace a smile or a small gesture.
Social Media 4
... and create a lack of true, face-to-face communication among people. Social media has provided a gateway for bullying ... commit suicide. Social media has been proven to have addictive qualities, which can affect a person’s ability to develop ... face forward, enhancing their self-esteem. However, their position is incorrect because studies have shown that Facebook may immensely minimize a person’s ...
Emoticons are poor substitutions for social graces. Learning to read facial expressions and body language is an artform that aids communication and understanding. An artform I feel our society is starting to lose thanks to social media. Studies such as this one are trying to locate where those fine lines are being crossed. The more data we have to compare, the better prepared we will be to deal with the unknowns of social media and the effects it will continue to have on our in-person communications. There are so many factors to be considered when looking at how social media and in- person communications relate to one another.
The introduction of the internet and technologies allowing access to social media have caused many researchers, along with parents and teachers to believe the cons would out-weigh the pros for the effects on face-to-face communications. There are still many concerns for how depression and social media relate, along with anxiety, online harassment, sleep deprivation, and internet addiction. All of these topics create opportunities to study more in depth the relationship between social media and in-person communications. This study hypothesized that there will be a relationship between social media and in-person communications.
