How Has Social Media Changed the Way We Communicate in the Family

People cannot deny that social media is part of people’s everyday life and the present society. The invention and innovation of technologies have contributed in the improvement of social media, which is now very popular in our society. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube are the most common and popular type of social media that were used by most of the social media users. It is useful for many people in different ways such as business, communication and in school; however, it can also give negative effects in many aspects especially in family. Social media unites family and allows them to communicate with one another online. Social media lets them share their ideas and thoughts online. On the contrary with last statement, the use of social media may also result into negative effects. The use of social media is one of the barriers in lack of communication in the family. Children’s addiction in social media influences them and lead them to spend more time on social media rather than having quality time with their parents. How has social media changed the way we communicate in the family - is the question for this essay. In the next paragraphs we will try to find out what are benefits and negative sides that affect the way we communicate with the closest ones. 

Social media has been an important part of the human history and the modern society. Before the invention of Facebook, twitter and Instagram, the primary type of social media was letter, telegraphs, radio and the first telephones. Several people want to connect social media history to the development of communications technology which has been taking place since the later part of the 19th century. According to Lee, social media is continually changing through time and most of these changes have been designed to capture the attention of the people.

According to Hudson, social media is a set of applications that are created to allow people interact and connect with other individuals using their mobile phones or computers promptly in real-time. Cohn, defined social media as another way sending information to other people, like your family, friends and co-workers. Cantor said that there are various categories of social media according to its uses, namely social networks, bookmarking sites, social news, media sharing, microblogging and blogs and forums. Social Networks and Media sharing are the most commonly used type of social media.

According to Kakkar, social network is the type of social media that allows people to connect with other individuals with similar interest or experience while media sharing, another type of social media, allows individual to share videos which offers common features like creating profiles of a person and giving comments or feedbacks. Clement said that the use of social media over the world is continually increasing, and this global growth is propelled by the cumulative usage of mobile devices and addiction. Additionally, Ekerns said that many negative and positive impact of social media into family relationships has been research.

Different categories of social media are useful to people, it can be used in communication, business, school, research and other activities. However, the use of social media has lots of positive and negative effects to health and different kinds of relationship particularly in family. Social media can change people’s way living and personality which may give bad or good result in communicating with others. Spending time on social media can be both harmful and helpful to people, depending on how they use it. And the objective of this study is to determine the impact of social media in family relationships.

This section provides information on the related literature about the impact of using social media in family relationships. This paper tackled the short history and the different categories of social media. This paper also discussed the most commonly used type of social media. This paper presents the positive and negative effects of spending more time on social media rather than having quality time with the family. It is also included the synthesis, conclusion and the recommendation formulated by the proponent which showed how the discussed related literature is significant in the present study.

The origin of social media extends much broader than one could imagine. Written letter delivered by hand from one person to another was the earliest way of communicating over great distances. According to McFadden, the first type of social media is the telegraph which was invented during 1792 by Samuel Morse. This innovation finally offered a long-distance way of communication of 'faster than horse' which was radical at that time. Social media reach into such primary needs of human-beings and it should come as no surprise that social media sites and applications are so influential today.

Over the years, social media has improved to include six main classifications, each with its own distinct set of features. The social networks like for example Facebook is designed to allow people connect with other users with similar background. Bookmarking sites enables the users to keep and categorize links to any number of operational websites. Social news is commonly used to published news links to external editorials. Another type of social media is the media sharing which allows people to share video which enables them to create profiles and accept immediate feedback from viewers. Blake, added that another type of social media are Microblogging and Forums, where you can reply to community messages and link to other sites of social media.

The STATcounter, released statistics results of the percentage of the most commonly used social media, showing that Facebook having 91.58 % as the highest. According to Mohsin, Facebook is the “market leader” in social network, there are 42% or over 3.2 billion of the world’s population who are actively using facebook and it is increasing every year due to its daily users. As stated by Duggan, there are approximately 81% of mothers and 66% of fathers who are actively using Facebook and 25% of parents were using Instagram. Anderson and Jiang said that 95% of adults are constantly online on Facebook.

According to Gilbert youtube, under media sharing, has over 1.8 billion users every month which is nearly as big as facebook. As said by Tjepkema, the worldwide use of social media is continually increasing. There seems to be no dispute that it is one of the most popular social media activities which people participate in.

Social media allows families in great distance to communicate with each other. Principally, the social media offers chance that will endure and toughen reachable social relations with family and colleagues. Social media lets family members to share content, ideas, and emotions with one another certainly. It enables parents to communicate more often with their child when they are at work.

The use of these social media applications also helps in maintaining closeness of family members by sharing their hobbies and interest. Based from the study of Contreras as cited by Ray and Jat, in parent-child relationship, they can use social media as means of social support and quality time to develop their parenting capacity in teaching their children.

The effects of social media are not always positive, it can also give negative interaction in family relationships. The habitual use of social media has become a barrier to a face-to-face communication especially in family. Several family members prefer to talk online instead of having direct confrontation. Harman, added that this may also affect mental health, when children experience struggles, most of them tend to share their problems through social media instead of telling it to their parents. According to Ray and Jat as cited by Ante-Contreras, a poor relationship of the parent and child may actually lead the child early in life to further behavioral or emotional issues relevant to interaction at an early age.

The use of social media may lead into less caring attitude to your family, caused by change in behavior of a person because of addiction to social media. It may also lead their children to demand for new gadgets which can tolerate them to become more addicted in using social media at very young age. There was a discovery that social media can easily influence children which may cause them to spend more time on social media rather than having quality time with their parents. Their addiction to social media can be harmful and can also affect their health.

Social media platforms have their own benefits and setbacks when it comes to family interaction. These platforms are also said to be useful when it comes to education by providing a means of social support and quality time. The uses of these social media platforms could also help in maintaining the closeness of family members by sharing their hobbies and interests, as well as through sharing ideas, content, and emotions. Like the purpose of the telegraph, social media offers long-distance communication. For instance, families with great distance from one another can still communicate by the use of social media. However, while these platforms bridge the gap produced by the physical distance between people, these platforms may also form a gap in people’s face-to-face communication or direct confrontation as mentioned above. These platforms may also affect parent-child relationship when a child shares their problems in social media instead of their parents, which may lead to further behavioral or emotional issues.

To conclude, the proponent of this paper discovered many positive and negative effects on the use of social media into family relationship. Several negative effects were found and were presented and discussed in the review of related literature of the study. Social media can bring zero personal communication to family. Spending more time in social media can affect parent-child relationship by acting as barrier into their face-to-face interaction and sharing problems with each other. Uncontrolled use of social media may lead to addiction, and it can easily influence children’s attitude towards their parents.

The proponent of this study suggests to the social media users to set limitations on spending time on social media. Most of the teenagers should know and try how to prioritize things well by decreasing their time on posting things on social media especially if it is not that important. People should try to avoid sharing their problems or making noise on social media, instead open it to the family members and let their relatives help themselves in finding solutions to their problems. Parents must not spoil their kids and provide them expensive gadgets at their young age to prevent children’s social media addiction.

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