Facebook: Effects on Social Adjustment & Human Relationships

        Facebook seems like the optimum tool for making friends nowadays. But, are these friends, really in fact, “friends” or are they really cyber acquaintances? While Facebook may allow the average person to interact with a variety of people all across the cultural and social spectrum, it also enables people to lose touch with how they behave around people when they are face to face with them. This dependency on a social media website not only hinders the ability of people to adjust themselves to physical encounters with people, but it also damages the natural human relationship. Why has it become easier for many of us to speak to our friends via Facebook by posting on their wall’s, rather than going over to their house and relaying our information by mouth or even making the effort to make a phone call and telling them what’s going on? Is it the mere fact that we’re lazy? Or is that we are afraid to engage in an interaction where physical emotions and facial expressions are present? Or could it be that we simply don’t want to? Many people (especially introverts) would argue that the pleasure of making and interacting with friends on Facebook is that you don’t have to go to the trouble of actually “meeting” the people you already know or want to know. The added pressure of having to live up to expectations or speaking clearly or combing hair is automatically gone, so it is much easier to communicate for many. However, while many laud this efficiency, research shows that Facebook communication may actually result in anti-social behavior in teens, lower grades for students (who spent too much time on the website), and even narcissism. Although the overall impacts on social adjustment and human relationships may seem negative in some aspects, Facebook has allowed humans to become “virtually empathetic”. Being “virtually empathetic”, humans are now more than ever accustomed to caring and relating to other’s pains on the internet. If we recognize a sad status or wall post then we are prone to comment on it to offer support or advice. The growing trend of using Facebook as a means to developing human relationships certainly does have its negative side, but we must also acknowledge the positive side.

http://mashable.com/2011/08/08/facebook-teens-study/