The primary purpose of social media was to help make communication better. At one point, the only way of contacting a loved one, especially abroad, was costly. The only options left were texts or calls, which cost more, or communicating via email. Social media made interactions more engaging beyond simply chatting with a person. You could call, video call, post, add pictures and instantly update your friends and family in one go. But is social media the best option for communication and relationships? This article will explain the role of social media and its negative or positive effects on communication and maintaining or building relationships.
Why Use Social Media in the First Place?
Is communication what determines whether it is a social media platform? Should it be restricted to a specific form of communication? For instance, do online dating platforms also amount to social media since it is a form of networking? Many people draw the underlying factor of social media as the ability to network with people. Therefore, any platform that allows one to interact with another amount to social media.
Many people associate the start of social media in the 21st century with the early 2000s. However, the first social media platform, SixDegrees.com, was established in 1997. It had around one million users but quickly declined after it was purchased for USD 125 million in the early 2000s.
In 2000, a different type of social media emerged with AmIHotorNot.com. Here, users would submit pictures of themselves, and others would comment on their attractiveness. While it was sold off a couple of times, surprisingly, it existed until 2014, after which it was transitioned to a game. In 2002, Friendster was launched, where you could post statuses and message people. The website, however, crashed as the unexpected popularity it gained resulted in the company needing more servers.
During this time, MySpace was the leading rival of Friendster. Emerged in 2003, the platform had 25 million monthly active users by 2005. Although Justin Timberlake eventually brought this USD 35 million, the rise of Facebook in 2003 by Mark Zuckerberg led to its downfall. Since then, multiple social media sites have emerged, including YouTube, Google Plus, Twitter, Instagram, and more.
How Has Social Media Affected Communication and Relationships?
According to Statistica, up to date, there are more than 4.59 billion social media users. As anyone can access such platforms through their mobile phones, the number of people who use them occasionally or consistently is enormous. The relevance of social media in today’s context is important. It is no longer a platform for friendly connection but is also a great platform to stay updated on the news and increase business revenues for organisations. Here are a few ways in which social media affects communication and relationships.
Becoming Social Addicts
Everywhere you go, be it in your workplace, the subway, or home, there would be someone scrolling on their phone looking at social media. As per the DataReportal report 2021, an average person spends two hours and 25 minutes daily on one or multiple social media platforms. Some people will also be very active in posting stories, tending to take a picture of every ‘insta-worthy’ shot of their food, surroundings or work. Social media has therefore driven users to post mundane acts like reading a book or buying a coffee as a form of communication. Instead of talking to one person via direct message, features such as stories that disappear in 24 hours encourage people to engage. On a positive note, such features can be used to educate a person’s followers by sharing useful threads or posts on a newsworthy event.
Lack of Social Skills in Real Life
Staying online and consistently communicating with someone behind a screen may result in some people not developing social skills. A person would rather mindlessly scroll on a social app than talk to someone. Even when the person next to them is a friend, there could be a tendency to be anti-social. Taken in another way, some people may not be present in real-life conversations. Those who communicate via text mostly may get anxious or feel awkward in real life when it comes to socialising. Catherine Steiner-Adair, a clinical psychologist, notes that children who use social media may lack important critical social skills. This is because when texting is the dominant mode of communication, teenagers forget that communication occurs through body language, facial expression, and even vocal range.
Rise of Abbreviated Words and Hashtags
Social media has changed the way people communicate in terms of how they write. Texting in abbreviated terms, such as ‘LOL’, ‘BTW’, ‘FYI’, and more, are common. Although some of these abbreviations may be common knowledge to all, the number of abbreviations is increasing. This suggests that the tendency to make every phrase an abbreviation may make a person too lazy to write. This is especially common among younger children who are used to shortening words to get their message out much faster. The use of hashtags in posts, moreover, has the potential to make one word or a few words with no spaces in between trending. Hence, power to certain words or key phrases emerges through social media. They can bring together a community of people that agree on a particular stance.
Sticking To Your Point
While platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn offer a large word and character limit for each status you upload, platforms like Twitter restrict you to 280 characters. As characters refer to every letter and space, users are forced to dilute their thoughts to post their tweets. This helps users to be precise and clear in what they want to say. At the same time, however, this could lead to misunderstandings. Even when you can add multiple tweets for one topic as a thread, statistics indicate most people often do not go beyond the first tweet. This also means it depends on the user’s ability to identify their main point and get it across in an attention-grabbing manner. This way, it also does not require users to put in a lot of thought to decipher meanings.
Social Media Contagion Effect
John Cacioppo, a researcher at the University of Chicago, explains that social media can potentially subject a user to emotional contagion effects. In other words, while social media is meant to communicate with people, it could make the user feel lonely. This is supported by various other studies, including one by Spencer Palmer Christensen, who cites other research that found participants who were more socially active in real life were reported to experience greater life satisfaction and higher psychological well-being. In contrast, online connections could impact our offline interpersonal relationships. This could be because not everyone on social media is kind. Cyberbullying and trolls could affect a person’s emotional state to the point of getting depression. Social media’s impact on one’s mental health also emanates because the user has been embarrassed publicly.
Make It Easy and Hard for Businesses To Form Interpersonal Relationships
Social media has offered organisations a way to gain sales in a virtual platform. This has paved the way for businesses that do not have a physical store to also thrive. Home-bakers, for example, solely depend and thrive on social media. While this makes it easy for a person to start a business page on social media free of charge, it is at the same time much harder to gain sales. For instance, businesses have to first gain a brand presence, which is essentially based on the number of followers a company has. An SME that just started may find it hard to do so. It also eliminates the possibility of personally approaching a potential customer to get them interested in purchasing something. Promotional material, however, provides such businesses to get more sales.
Using Polls
Researchers that are carrying out qualitative or quantitative research can share surveys through their profiles to gain the opinions of youth, for instance. If you are a public user, social media can share your content with those beyond your circle. Hence, it provides a higher chance of getting a vast pool of people to answer your questions. Polls allow businesses or anyone to get creative in their marketing strategy, encouraging their followers to engage with them. The best part is that it provides real-time feedback, not allowing one individual to vote more than once. While platforms such as Instagram and Facebook display the user names in poll results, on platforms like Twitter, a user’s anonymity is guaranteed. The latter ensures they select their true opinion out of the options given.
Social Media Can be Positive or Negative
It is clear that social media affect communication and relationships. Whether it affects positively or negatively, however, will depend. A person who is more addicted to social media and is an introvert may experience many of the negative consequences of social media. Those who have a balanced life and are mindful of how they use their account may find it positive.
