Social networking sites and their effects on relationships

Social Networking Sites

Not everyone in the world visits social media networking sites, or uses sites like Facebook, but millions of people do, and for the most part, those users find Facebook to be a helpful way to stay in touch with friends and to make new friends as well. This paper points to the many positive things that result from using Facebook, and why millions of people -- and myriad community organizations, political groups, sports-related organizations, religious groups, schools, friends of those in need of fundraising efforts, and social change movements -- find Facebook a wonderful tool for communication, action, and for keeping relationships strong. In this paper "relationships" means more than romantic bonds between two people. Relationships can refer to communication between two friends, interaction between a person and an organization, and the interaction between two organizations on Facebook denotes another kind of relationship as well.

Facebook -- More than 800 Million Active Users for Good Reasons

According to Facebook's statistics page, there are presently more than 800 million "active users" and more than 50% of those active users log on to Facebook "in any given day," the Statistics page explains. The average user has 130 friends on Facebook and there are "more than 900 million objects that people interact with" on Facebook (pages, groups, events and community pages), according to Facebook's Statistics page. There are also more than 70 languages available on the site and more than 75% of Facebook users live outside of the United States. And now that smartphones are becoming very commonplace among consumers, about 350 million "active users" access Facebook's pages through their mobile devices (Facebook Statistics).

An article in the peer-reviewed Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking journal presents research that shows Facebook can "enhance 'social-self-esteem'" (Gonzales, et al., 2011, 79). Social self-esteem in this context is measured as personal perceptions of one's "physical appearance, close relationships, and romantic appeal," Gonzales explains. In other words, people with low self-esteem may well receive "positive benefits" from the various social interaction opportunities provided by Facebook.

Facebook and other social networking sites are designed to help a person share information about one's self with others, and that includes a person's likes, dislikes, a person's hobbies and dreams, and "personal musings" along with photos and "status updates" (Gonzales, 79). The Gonzales article tested several hypotheses regarding the potential for Facebook to enhance self-esteem, and the findings support the fact that Facebook is "…a unique source of self-awareness stimuli in that it enhances awareness of the optimal self… and may actually improve self-esteem" (Gonzales, 82). And the more comfortable a person is with his self-image, the more likely he or she will be able to develop and/or strengthen personal relationships.

Another scholarly research article in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking (Hsu, et al., 2011) determined through surveys that Facebook users employ different behaviors towards friends depending on the intimacy of the relationship. Users tended to gain "more perceived acquaintanceships from 'less close friends' with whom users have more frequent interaction but less intimate behaviors" (Hsu, 473). On the other hand, when interacting with "closer friends" the users tended to use "more intimate activities" to interact with those closer friends. Interestingly, users on average spent more time with "less close friends" even though there was less time spent with the "less close friends" (Hsu, 473).

It doesn't take a psychologist to figure out that Facebook is a place to build new relationships with other uses. The surveys that Hsu and colleagues conducted found that prior to going on Facebook the average user viewed acquaintances in the following descending order: close friends, average friends, acquaintances, and new friends. But after being on Facebook and using it regularly, Hsu found that users' "perceived acquaintanceships all increased" (475). That is, the study revealed that users gain "more familiarity with new friends and acquaintances" and "less with average friends" and the very least "with close friends" (Hsu, 475). Hence, it can be stated with assurance that Facebook is a mechanism for developing new relationships with people and for close friends those relationships are apparently already solid so embracing new relationships becomes a more vital activity (Hsu, 475).