Interpersonal Communication Research Paper

In the last ten to fifteen years accompanying the dawn of social media, means of communication among friends and strangers have been easier than ever. Since its creation in 2004, Facebook has grown into the largest social media site on the Internet with 30 million users and counting. The ability to catch up with former high school friends who are now across the country or see how an aunt in Pittsburgh has been doing since the birth of her son are now as simple as the click of a mouse. However, the amount of “friends” acquired on social media may not be an accurate reflection of how many close relationships one truly shares. In an article from Bigthink.com titled “Do You Have Too Many Facebook Friends?”, Steven Mazie gathers research from Pew Research Center about statistics surrounding Facebook

According to an article in the International Journal of Scientific Research and Publications, one of the greatest benefits of social media is the mean of communication. Social media makes it easy for you to communicate with families and friends all around the world, but is also helps you to build new relationships and socialize more. People that usually have no time to meet others in person because of limited availability stay in contact more often by using email, facetime and also by text messages. The author states that social media works as a bridge of communication between people that share the same interests and that networking sites allows them to spread communicate their ideas with others.

Communication technology is a tool which allows the technology for communication. This technology has a tremendous impact on the communication process. It has changed the face of the entire communication process in today’s world. Technology has revolutionized the way people communicate, linking humans in a real-time network across the globe. However, technology has also changed communication in many ways, and some of them are not for the better. While some of these negative effects are relatively minor, in some cases they have had profound effects on the lives and well-being of the

These drawbacks include too many people being reliant to talking online rather than in person and not verbally communicating with friends even though they are in the same room. Jasmine Fowlkes shows the reality in how social media is affecting our new generation through her article, “Viewpoint: Why Social Media is Destroying our Social Skills.” After discussing the results conducted by several researchers, Fowlkes states,“As more generations are born into the social age, social media will continue to be the favored communication form among young people. However, this shift may begin to affect their ability to properly communicate in person with peers.” Many start to rely on applications on our devices to talk to people, but this results in less verbal communication. In addition, Kelly-Fay’s Talktrack research study showed that conversations held in person are much more impactful than on social media. Rather than making social media a huge part of your life, Fowlkes wishes that people would look up from their phones and engage more with others since that could change their lives.

With the proliferation of technologies, especially the Internet, social networking has become ubiquitous in the modern world. Social networking tools like Facebook, Twitter, etc. are the impetus that is ever facilitating rapid creation and exchange of ideas to promote and aid communication. Humans interact by being social, therefore sociology analyses the changes in the social trend. Understanding the sociological perspective on the effects of social media, we find that the social aspect has changed. Comparing the past and present status of our society, it is obvious that there has been a transformation which all points towards the evolution of social media. Social media has changed our culture and has impacted on the way people meet, interact and share ideas; it has changed the perception of how people should communicate with the society. Social interactions have been defined to be an exchange among individuals with the aim of strengthening the society. Social interaction is building block in every society when people meet and interact; they define rules, systems, and institutions in which they will live by. On the other hand, social media is known as a platform that allows people to network and socialize through applications and websites that have been innovated. Though social media could be used as a useful tool to communicate with friends, family and even with people you do not know, however, researchers show that social media is absolutely harming human's skills to have

T. Sawchuk in his essay “Dating and Relating in the Internet Age” tells us about the psychological need of gathering and enjoying information about the other person through social media. For example – Facebook is the biggest social medium that helps to anonymously (most of the cases) find out pictures, thoughts, friends and interests of other people. My reaction isn’t as skeptical as the previous one, but still, psycho-Facebook-addiction isn’t really for me. I’m not interested in this topic and as well I’m not addicted to any social media, especially Facebook.

Ellison et al believed that Facebook is a ‘rich site’ for research into the quality of relationships due its ‘heavy usage patterns’ and the mechanics of how it is more about offline to online relationships due the nature of the creation of the site, for university students to communicate. Facebook in incredibly different from other CMC as many users actually know most their ‘friends’ in real terms on the site.

In “Me and My 400 Friends: The Anatomy of College Students’ Facebook Networks, Their Communication Patterns, and Well-Being,” Manago, Taylor, and Greenfield seek to understand if there is a trade-off between large networks of social connections on social networking sites (such as Facebook), and the development of intimacy and support among today’s generation of young adults. Published January 30, 2012 and consisting of 12 pages of research, the study was conducted by online survey distributed to students at a large urban university. Participants answered questions about their relationships by sampling their Facebook contacts while viewing their online profiles. The findings of this study indicate the transformation of the nature of intimacy in the environment of a social network site, while also emphasizing the psychological importance of audience in the Facebook environment. It is suggested that social networking helps young adults satisfy psychosocial needs for permanent social relationships in a geographically mobile world.

In this scholarly article, Wailin Wong claims that using the internet lessen the face to face interaction between people communicating. She explains that communicating through social media builds relationship and self- esteem. This article states the nature of social communication online or its effects on social connection and personal well-being.

It can be argued that technology has made the world more connected. People connect with each other though cell phone, tablets and personal computers more than ever before. While it may be true that people are more connected today, there is also a great communication divide that exists. One need only look at a crowded train or school bus and see most people consumed by their mobile device. Technology, it seems, makes people more distant creating a communications gap.

It is becoming more frequent in today’s society to utilize social media to connect and stay in touch with others. In fact, one could say that social media has become an everyday part of our lives. More than 800 million individuals use Facebook daily (Fox & Anderegg, 2014). It is therefore of great significance, that one gives awareness to how the frequency of social media usage can affect our romantic relationships. This study consists of analyzing the amount of time one spends on Facebook and if the amount of time has an effect on the relationship satisfaction. Previous studies have gone over the aspects of the activities and concepts among individuals that can cause negative relationship outcomes but these studies have not extended beyond the concept of frequency. Moreover, previous research has suggested that individuals’ attachment status, individuals who have Facebook–related conflict, individuals who were in shorter term relationships, and individuals who have certain ideas of what normal behavior is when getting to know someone on the website can end up predicting negative relationship outcomes (Clayton, Nagurney, & Smith, 2013).

In the world we live in today, people have the opportunity to interact with one another due to the advancement in technology. For many years people relied on the traditional ways of communications, for example pay phones, send letters, a house phone, in person and they even used web cam’s. Presently, people rely on modern day methods of communication such as sending text messages, emails or even messaging via social. The development of the internet has made it so much easier for people to communicate that Social Media has become the place where people interact more than ever in a mere second.

Social media has caused a social shift in how people communicate and interact. From the functionalist perspective, every individual follows and connects with others with the intention to further their development as individuals and make contribution to the society. According to functionalist perspective, social media provides a simpler and quickest way to contact people and easy ways to meet new people i.e. socialize people. It lends itself to the popular platforms such as WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. These platforms have enabled people to be social online and open up a world, which replicates a culture of intimacy in the society. This ideally has permitted individuals to communicate more effectively and solve their problems quickly. Through posts and conversations that happen on a human level, individuals connect with others in a compelling and very personal way. Social media is about relationships and people, and is serving as a foundation for everything; individuals have amplified voices and are now a powerful passage of peer-to-peer stimulus – for better. In the eyes of a functionalist, social media contributes in a very beneficial way, to society. It makes people’s culture more and acts as a stress reliever, which the end result is decreased conflict.

Technology, while it might be a blessing to our advancement as human beings, is one of the many burdens our society has. Everyone has a form of technology, whether it might be a cell phone for parents to call their kids, online textbooks made for college students, or even social media. These forms of technology has their share of benefits, but has numerous complications that outweigh them. It is one of the reasons that technology is debatable whether it has a positive or negative impact in our lives. Based on its challenges, whether it offers more on traditional methods of communications, or if it even helps bring us as a society together or drives us further apart, a person can conclude that it produces a negative impact in our society.

With the rapid growth of high technology, computer, telephone and other communication tools have become more and more important in our daily life. “Through the advent of technologies such as e-mail, wireless Internet, and cell phones, organizations are becoming more wired both within and outside of the workplace.” (Marcus, Becker and Boswell). What people have gradually ignored face-to-face communication? Face-to-face communication means people interact with each other without any barriers. In the past, people only can communicate with others in this way; however, nowadays, more and more people, especially young persons, get contact with their families and friends by using telephone, e-mail, text massages and letters. It is true that the advanced communicational technologies get the distance between human-beings closer, but in some way, they also elongate the distance, as people are no longer need to keep connect face-to-face, which means strange and unbelievable. Hence the best way of communication is face-to-face.