Running head : SOCIAL NETWORKS AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR

Do Social Networks Enhance Peoples Relationship with Their Families or Friends ? Ilifilza Anis Rusli The Ohio State University

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR

When I was young girl, a famous romantic movie titled Titanic was one of my favorite movie. I kept watching the movie over and over again because I really adore the relationship between the two main characters, namely Rose and Jack. Their love story was so real and passionate even though people around them were against their relationship. That movie had made a big impact on me especially in my own love story when I was a teenager. Unfortunately, as I grew older, that kind of relationship that was shown in the Titanic movie hardly can be seen today especially when technologies are taking over peoples social life. A few decades ago, people wrote letters and posted it using snail mail to communicate with their loved ones who live thousands of miles away from them. That was the era when computers and mobile phones were yet to be invented and people used traditional ways, such as writing a letter, calling them on the telephone and sending messages using the telegraph to communicate with their relatives. Arnold Brown (2011) in his article Relationships, Community, and Identity in the New Virtual Society stated that, In the new Virtual Society, we will see an increasing transition from basic matchmaking sites to sites that enable people to actually go out on online dates without ever leaving their desks (pg. 30). Obviously, social networks had seriously taken an important role in our social life and had changed ways of people having a relationship over the span of a few years. People do not have to face many difficulties to contact their loved ones when there are a plethora of simpler ways to do so right now. We can get connected with our acquaintances easily with just a click on social networking sites. Do you think social networks can really enhance the relationship between people? As for me, I believe social networks are not a good platform to enhance the relationship between people because they are not able to represent their true selves, virtual interactions are not as good as face-to-face meetings, and people will easily be misunderstood.

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR Social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, do not represent our true selves on the

virtual page. Needham & Company (2007) states that, Facebook was created in 2004 and it was announced to have more than 21 million active members generating 1.6 billion page views each day by 2007 (pg. 3). The statical information that the author has stated before shows that there are so many people who are using Facebook and the numbers are growing from day to day. We should be aware that what people see on the Facebooks profile page is not usually the right information, sometimes. Most people want to look good in front of the others, so they tend to fake their identities and personal information. For instance, these types of people will edit their pictures to make their skin look flawless or use someone elses picture as their profile picture on Facebook. They also set their relationship statuses as single when they are actually married. The reason why they are doing so is most probably because they wanted to gain praise and compliments from their social networks friends. If we befriend with the person who is literally fake, the relationship does not enhance since our friendship was built over a fake identity. We would not know the persons true color, either the person is a good person or a bad person, and what is his or her hidden intentions of being our friend. According to Evgeny Morozov and Clay Shirky (2010), the Iranian government blocked Facebook during the election time because it is so influential to the citizen. It is true that social networks have become so influential since a few years ago and will give bad influence to us if we use it in the wrong way. Hence, having a circle of fake friends will definitely not strengthen the friendship bonds built over social networks. Moreover, some pictures or statuses post on social networks are not appropriate to be viewed by our relatives and family members. For instance, if we upload a picture on Facebook of us having a wild party with our friends and then our relatives viewed the picture, somehow they will have a bad impression of us. We do not realize that with just uploading a picture on our so-

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR

cial networks page that it will make bonds between family members to become weaker. Besides, there will be an awkward moment when all family members gathered in a room when they have actually seen our wild side on the virtual pages. We must be concerned with who will see what we post on the social networks in order to keep a good relationship with our loved ones. Additionally, in this new era, people are having conversations virtually, and it is not as good as a face-to-face meeting. There are so many applications, such as Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, and Line, that are now becoming important platforms for people to talk or have a conversation. They do not have to meet up with the particular person in person because now they can hold a meeting virtually. By having this virtual meeting, people believe it will help save their time and money since they do not have to travel over a distance to meet with that person. Besides, most of the applications that they used to communicate with their friends are free of charge. They just need to get connected to the internet to use these applications and as we all know, today, we can get internet connection easily. We have to agree with what Otto Katte (2012) said in his article Is Facebook destroying our capacity for meaningful relationships?, where he wrote, But in-person interaction demanded something different: the time and vulnerability it takes to build trust and the focus and depth required for service efforts to be meaningful (pg. 2). Video conferencing, for example, is not the same with meeting up with the person because it involves less emotions compared to when we meet them in person. We get to touch the person when we meet him or her personally. Personal gestures such as a pat on the shoulder, a hug, or a kiss, do enhance the relationship between people since we can understand more on what do they feel at that moment. Furthermore, when we do the face-to-face group discussion, it is way more efficient compared to one that we do virtually. We will receive informations from the other team members

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR

directly and clearly. The discussion that we held also will be smooth compared to when we held it on social networks. Many disruptions can occur during a virtual discussion such as internet connection problem, low quality of the video camera, and the other members could not hear what we were saying clearly. It will make us annoyed because we need to say the information again repeatedly. Hence, face-to-face meeting definitely will strengthen the bonds between people and it will make the discussion activity much easier. While using the social networks, people will easily be misunderstood by posts that they showed to the public. When we write a status update on Twitter, for instance, some people will read it using a different tone. Sometimes, people will misread it and they will assume that we were mad at them when actually we were not. They also misinterpret it wrongly and thought that the unmentioned-name status update was directed to them. We can see things like these occasionally happen in our daily life and these kind of acts will hurt the relationship built over times. Today, people are like pancakes; they absorb everything and spread information and things will go viral in a nick of time (Foreman and Dyson ,2010). We definitely do not want people to spread bad news about us that will definitely make our circle of friends become smaller. If we are working as a baby sitter, for instance, and our bosses saw our wild attitude on the social networks, definitely we will be fired because they were doubting on our credibility to be a good baby sitter for children. They will think that our bad attitude will give a negative impact to the childrens early development. Next, if we are applying for a job, our future employers could oversee what kind of people we are only by looking at our social networks profile before they give their decision on our job applications. We might have a small chance or no chance at all to get the job if the attitude that we presented on social networks was bad. Thus, to prevent such

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR

things from happening we must use social networks carefully in everyday life because it will not strengthen our relationship between people. Another example is about the romantic conversations between lovers being replaced with text messages instead. Relationships today are transparent to the public and there is no privacy at all when everyone wants to show how great their love story is on social networks. According to Friedman, L. F. (2013), back then during 1963 in the Bye Bye Birdie movie, when the hero and the heroine of the movie was officially in a relationship, teenagers in the town ran excitedly to spread the good news to the neighborhood. Today, however, we just need a click on the mouse pad to tell people that we are in a relationship with someone and when we are out of love, we just need to click it again to tell the world about our break ups. It seems that the relationship is not as meaningful as once it was cherished before. People recently have been using the social networks to spill their heart out, to tell the world how much they love their loved ones on the social networks and even to propose to their soulmate using Facebook. From the previous statement, we could observe that the heartfelt moment that should be shared between only two of them are now not that romantic anymore. Showing love just by texting or writing a status update is not enough.The digital age had replaced the good long-handwritten letter to a text message from the mobile phone. The long-night-talk before they went to sleep is now being replaced with the Good night wish text message instead. The heart-to-heart talk can rarely be seen now because people prefer to write their heart out instead of saying it in person. However, the other person can easily misunderstand the tone of the text messages and it will contribute to the reasons why lovers fight. Apparently, we could see that romance is slowly dying if these kind of attitudes happen continuously.

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR

All in all, there are definitely many ways to enhance our relationship between people instead of using social networks.We definitely do not want to befriend with a fake person because he or she might hurt us. We also need to revive back the traditional way of showing love to our loved ones by writing a letter or telling them what we feel in person. Then, people will start to realize that traditional ways are more romantic compared to the new ones. Moreover, we also need to filter up what we want to write for status updates on our virtual pages so it will not offend anyone who reads it. Social networks are indeed a good place to socialize and keep in touch with our old friends. It is good to use a social network as it makes our life easier and it will save our time to interact with people. However, we need to be aware that everything in this world has its own pros and cons. We have to use social networks wisely because it will hurt our relationship between families and friend if we use it the other way around.

Reference Brown, A. (2011). Relationships, Community, and Identity in the New Virtual Society. Futurist, 45(2), 29-34.

Foreman, Richard, and George Dyson,(2011). "The Pancake People vs. The Godel-to-Google Net." Culture: Leading Scientists Explore Civilizations, Art, Networks, Reputation, and the On-line Revolution. Ed. John Brockman. New York: Harper Perennial, 2011. N. pag. Print.

Friedman, L. F. (2013). Till Unfriending Do Us Part. Psychology Today, 46(1), 18.

May, M., & Kwong, K. H. (2007). YHOO: Yahoo! may regret not paying up for Facebook. Re trieved May 10, 2007 from http://www.needhamco.com/Research/Documents/ CPY25924.pdf

Morozov, Evgeny, and Clay Shirky,(2011). "Digital Power and Its Discontents." Culture: Lead ing Scientists Explore Civilizations, Art, Networks, Reputation, and the On-line Revolu tion. Ed. John Brockman. New York: Harper Perennial, 2011. N. pag. Print.

Otto, K. (2012, June). Is Facebook destroying our capacity for meaningful relationships?. Christ ian Science Monitor. p. N.PAG.