The Influence of Social Networking Sites free essay sample

It is not surprising that many people are hooked on with these sites since it is free and easily accessible with the use of a computer connected to the internet and even with the use of a mobile phone that enables SNS applications or internet browsing. However, does SNS usage affect interpersonal relationships? Do people rely too much on the fastest way communicating on the internet despite the lack of face-to-face interaction? This research aims to determine the effects of SNS to the interpersonal relationships. It also focuses on analyzing the level of interpersonal relationship after using SNS.The research will then consider how social networking sites impact interpersonal relationship in the real world. This research is based on a survey of ____ purposively a third year and fourth year education student respondents that use social networking sites everyday with the status of their interpersonal relationship with family, friends, teachers and others as they use social networking sites. We will write a custom essay sample on The Influence of Social Networking Sites or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Mary’s College. Examples of social networking sites are Friendster, Facebook, Twitter and Plurk. Social Networking Sites help us to communicate with our friends, classmates, and relatives but they also allow us to communicate with other people who share common interests with us. For instance a person added another person as a friend on Facebook since both of them is addicted on playing Restaurant City. Through these SNS, we develop virtual interpersonal relationships. An interpersonal relationship is a relatively long-term association between two or more people.This association may be based on emotions like love and liking, regular business interactions, or some other type of social commitments. Interpersonal relationships take place in a great variety of contexts, such as family, friends, marriage, acquaintances, and are the basis of social groups and society as a whole . Social networking sites influence the interpersonal relationship of students in many ways. Through social networking sites, users come to meet other people Worldwide. These people can affect the user’s interpersonal relationship with other people close to him/her.This influence can either be good or bad for the user. The researcher chose the topic about the influence of social networking sites to be studied because it is shown evidently that most of the students in St. Mary’s College use Social Networking Sites as part of their activities done in the internet. Many students always log into their account on Facebook, Friendster, etc. as a part of their everyday routine. Could you imagine the number of all the students logging in to these social networking sites, everyday? That would be millions of students logging in social networking sites. Why students are interested on these sites? Social networking sites typically offer many features and those features are positively the reason why many students are interested in checking out these sites. One of the general features of SNS is profiles. A profile contains all the information about the person plus their photos, videos, applications that they use and comments/messages posted by other persons. Well, SNS also offers special features like for example, Facebook has social games like Restaurant City and Pet Society.It is evident that many students greatly rely on these sites in order to interact with their friends and other people whether they know them or not. Being dependent to these sites promotes online friendships which are not good since they might encounter people that are suspicious in behavior. These sites hinder face-to-face friendship but many students reason out that they use SNS in order to communicate conveniently with their faraway friends. What do these SNS possess to make the students keep on using them? Why do students upload photos, videos, post comments/messages on other profiles and play social games?What are the benefits and purpose of doing these activities? Why are social networking sites frequently used by students nowadays? The researcher goal is to address these questions and have an in-depth study with regards to those questions stated above. Students’ usage of social networking sites provides long-lasting insights to identity construction, social behavior and peer-to-peer interaction therefore studies such as this arises that found out the real perspective of students about social life. B. Conceptual Framework In general, online relationships contain much weaker ties than face-to-face relationships (Vitak, 2008).Social networking sites such as Facebook offer users a convenient method for maintaining a large number of weak ties. While maintenance of strong ties typically requires significant commitm ents of time and energy, weak ties maybe managed solely through the connections that link Facebook â€Å"friends. † Facebook allows users to stay up-to-date on their weak ties’ lives simply by viewing the information available in those friends’ profiles and by connecting through actions such as pokes, private messages, wall postings and photo comments. By offering multiple methods of interaction, Facebook saves users significant time, thus enabling them to create and maintain a massive social network, although one predominantly composed of weak connections between users. For example, a recent survey found that the average user had 180 friends on the website, which is far more â€Å"friends† than the average person would say they have in the real world (Golder et al. , 2006). In cases where factors such as distance change a face-to-face relationship into a primarily online relationship, strong ties are maintained and even strengthened further.Social networking sites is a tool for person to keep in touch with his distant friends by following their updates, sending a message or posting comments—users have a quick and easy way to stay connected thus keep the relationship healthy when they are too busy to commit more time to face-to-face interaction (Vitak, 2008). For more vivid picture of the study, Figure 1 served as the research paradigm. Paradigm of the Study Social Networking Sites Figure 1. The influence of social networking sites on the interpersonal relationships of the students.The paradigm above shows the influence of social networking sites to the interpersonal relationship of students. There are two possible types of interpersonal relationship that students tend to develop. These are the following: Stronger interpersonal relationship of students with their friends, teachers, and parents. This happens if a student or a person knows well how to use a social networking site. Students are always updated with the status of their close friends, teachers, or even their parents that are added in their friends list in the social networking sites that they are using.