One of the obvious benefits of Facebook is that it allows people to strengthen current relationships and create new ones. It makes sense since Facebook’s service is based around the idea of letting you connect with friends, family and acquaintances which would be difficult to do even with modern technology such as cell phones or e-mail. While a cell phone allows you to quickly contact people, it can be laborious to keep tabs if the social group becomes too large. Facebook allows this in a quick and efficient manner. We now can create and keep relationships that would otherwise fall apart. When we leave one off-line community and move to another it doesn’t mean that we want those relationships to dissolve. In fact, one study came to the conclusion that “online interactions do not necessarily remove people from their offline world but may indeed be used to support relationships and keep people in contact, even when life changes move them away from each other” (Ellison). Without Facebook, we would need to spend a large amount of time and energy maintaining or creating long distance relationships but with Facebook, we can easily see what they’re doing, how they feel, what major events are going on in their lives and overall what is going on in their lives and do it efficiently. It doesn’t mean that people are forgoing off-line relationships for online ones, it means that people want to keep the relationships they have, not break them off when they are no longer able to see the person consistently.
Some would argue though that while Facebook allows us to create and maintain online relationships easily, it comes at the cost of weakening our relationships offline. That when we spend time building and maintaining relationships online, ...
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...oes it does well and the benefits, and the potential that Facebook has on our lives greatly outweighs any negatives or risks that may be imposed when we use this service. The fact that Facebook allows users to build and maintain relationships, increase social capital and give the ability to push for political change is incredible. Without this website and the ones like it, we would not have the amount of relationships we have; we would not have the ability to organize and demonstrate so easily. Facebook gives power to the masses, something that we have not always had. Facebook in terms of other technology and services is relatively new, but its potential is great. As people and organizations use this service more, it will serve a more important role than messaging friends and updating our status. As it grows and is refined it will be a tool to bettering our society.
In Clive Thomas’s “I’m So Totally, Digitally Close To You”, he discusses how Social Media has both positive and negative effects on relationships with friends and acquaintances. Thomas puts a large focus on the website Facebook. He discusses the pros and cons of the privacy level, ambient awareness, and effects on “weak tie” relationships that websites like Facebook create. He explains how this constant online communication, ambient awareness, gives you a sense of someone’s thoughts, actions, and experiences without actually being present. Thomas uses creditable sources such as Zeynep Tufekci, former assistant professor of sociology at the University of Maryland...
is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Psychology Department at Albright College, allowing her to be credible for discussing the topic of how Facebook psychologically affects relationships. She has written an article on Psychology Today and argues that Facebook has effects relationships. However, instead of taking a purely negative stance on the subject, she discusses the benefits, such as increasing communication, and consequences, like causing jealousy, of Facebook usage on relationships. The limitation of her argument is that she solely discusses Facebook use and does not address other forms of social media. Nevertheless, a majority of her argument can still be applied to many social media outlets, such as Instagram, Twitter, etc. This article is relevant to my research because Facebook is still a commonly used form of social media, as a relationship is not considered “official” unless one’s relationship status is updated on the website. Furthermore, the research is applicable to my own because her findings are about Facebook, which is a website I intend on including in my
Many positive aspects of social media result in the expansion of relationships but overall Clayton, Nagurney, & Smith (2012) found that a high level of use, specifically Facebook, was associated with negative relationship outcomes and increased relational conflicts. Social media additionally reduces the need for face-to-face interactions, where online communication replaces daily in-person interactions, resulting in reduced ability to maintain these relationships. Many of the relationships created on social media do not have a high level of fidelity, reliability, or trustworthiness. While endeavoring to establish and maintain online friendships adolescents may partake in exaggeration or self-aggrandizing, resulting in a less than accurate representation
“Facebook undermines well-being rather than enhancing it”, Ethan Kross writes in “Facebook Use Predicts Declines in Subjective Well-Being in Young Adults”, a scholarly study of the negative psychological effects of Facebook. He recruited 82 Facebook users in the study to observe their Facebook activity, the state of mind, and direct social contacts. They reported that the more people use Facebook, the more their life satisfaction levels decline; the more the participants socialized in the real world, the more positive they are (721). “Why socializing on Facebook has a different effect from socializing in person?”, the author asks in the “Facebook Is Bad For You: Get A Life!” from The Economist.
I attended the "Sex, Gender, and Commodity on Facebook" Pop Culture Series event. The presentation illustrated the power and impact Facebook has on us, our relationships, and in our lives. Ceilan and Jeff were describing Facebook as an ideology that calls us to participate and become a part of it. The social network was a commodity that has turned into an important necessity in our lives. Facebook is a way for people to keep score and evaluating themselves against their friends and family; by comparing their accomplishments, social lives, and possessions. It is constructed to be a template for a simple, flattened, and edited construction of one's self and identity. It allows you to share your life with others on the Internet by sharing the six essentials: work and education, places lived, relationship, family, basic information, and contact information.
Loved ones, best friends, coworkers, classmates, and siblings shape our personal network. Within that network, not all the relationships are equally important, and therefore, I believe that Facebook can be a positive tool if used in a responsible and smart manner, but only if a balance can be found. Social media was created to help people maintain connections despite the distance, with the idea of being a supplement more than a substitute for human interaction. However, what it is actually doing is isolating us in our own worlds, making us lonelier and, ultimately, less
Advancement of communication technologies has brought our friends to a stone's throw away. In particular, Facebook allows us to share our ongoing lives by advanced cyber-images. This element of society has opened a new window for people keen to share information with intimacy and personal relationship. In the way of social communication people often use this wonder medium and eventually has created a world of virtual friendship. Due to its virtual property people sometimes also consider Facebook friendship as superficial and pretentious. Niedzviecki (2011, p. 656) termed this relationship just more than nothing in life. However, after operating from February 04, 2004 in its existence of a decade Facebook has placed itself inevitable to 1.1 billion users (Wilson, 2014). Facebook has made itself unique in keeping up-to-date on friends' lives, widening social network and providing an active flow of information. These social communicating features have led Facebook gaining rapid popularity to its users.
"We believe that more relationships provide more opportunity." (Source 2). It has gotten into the minds of avid Internet users that the more people you have retweeting you, liking your pictures, or your status, the more social you become. How many of these followers are actually their friends? The more notifications you have on social media does not equal the amount of friends you have. It does not make you social, it just makes you another active user on social media. Receiving notifications does not help you make friends. Even just having a little chat with people online does not mean you are friends. More relationships with people online do not provide any opportunity of creating any real friendships. Friendship are not created by liking someone's status or retweeting someone's picture. ". . . online Americans tend to have 644 ties on average." (Source 1). There is more focus on making connections, than making real friends. A casual conversation does not automatically create a real friendship. Online you can create a larger group of connections, but this does not make you social. The social ties that the internet offers do not create a real bond between people. Social media connections do not help you create a real relationship with another person. More social ties do not mean you are interacting with more people, it just means you have connections with a larger group. I don’t agree with the belief that
Although social networks allow for more conversation among more people, they are also deceitful mechanisms that limit face-to-face interactions and possibly ruin the true meaning of friendship. They allow for more conversation by showing who is available to talk. This gives people the freedom to talk to whoever, whenever, which expands relationships. Unfortunately, over usage of social networking sites can limit the amount of time that people have to intermingle in person. They become deceitful mechanisms that take away from two or more people’s face-to-face time together. Fortunately, limiting the amount of time spent on social networking sites can lead to the perfect relationship: one with just the right amount of time spent interacting in person as well as miles away from each other.
We use it as part of our everyday language, there are films and books made on it and built around it ("Facebook me" and "selfie" are legitimate dictionary words now). The cultural, artistic and aesthetic impact Facebook has on our lives today is astronomical. And as times are advancing. The leaps and bounds Facebook are crossing to introduce more innovations to the way we connect and communicate with people. Everything from breaking news to rights activism to the trendiest new apparel store on the block, they are all revealed through
I think facebook is a good website in some ways for things such as communicating with friends, and talking with each other. There are also some things that are not too good about facebook, and could be bad to someone’s health. There are more than five hundred million people that are children, teens, adults, and also even stalkers on this website so many people in the world use today, facebook.
A person’s life is reflected on Facebook. Because so much of someone’s life is on Facebook, anyone can have a sense of what is going on in their life. This is beneficial for parents away from their children in college or just away from the nest. A visual image is more attractive than reading a lengthy blog about an individual's day. With Facebook someone can post albums at a time and can share a special event that just recently occurred. Instant messaging has improved the speed that users can communicate with each other. If they see that their friend is online all that needs to be done is a message with the word “Hey.” Facebook allows for users to connect with friends time zones away.
On the App.”) writes the article basically explaining how great online dating sites and social media are. However, the part that Wortham agrees with is there is nothing better than the actual benefit you receive when in the presence of another person. There are many benefits to the social applications. For example, in the past, when you were many miles away from the one you love or one you want to be with, it was very hard to see them face to face. With new technology, now you are able to see them and interact with them whenever you want.That is one of the key reasons social media was created; to stay connected even if you are miles apart. Studies show that overall it actually strengthen the relationships over time because people still hold the appeal of the other person even after there is no distance between them(Wortham, 396). Wortham includes this statistic, “74% of couples surveyed reported that the internet has a positive impact on their relationship. In addition, 40% of couples in a serious relationship said that they felt closer to their partners because of online technology(369).” Yes, their relationships are building yet, there is still that longing feeling for one-on-one
“According to Cornell University's Steven Strogatz, social media sites can make it more difficult for us to distinguish between the meaningful relationships we foster in the real world, and the numerous casual relationships formed through social media” (Jung, 2016). It is not a shocking fact when you notice that it requires much less energy to just sit around and text. It sounds innocent at first but when you realize that people are now spending hours and hours on their screens some concern
...ers, former teachers, college friends, or different people from anywhere in the world. Roger mentioned that “These sites also enable people to keep in touch with a wide circle of friends and colleagues” (Roger 49). Therefore, Facebook is effective in allowing people to stay in touch with their friends and family, which contributes to the positive effect of social networking.