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Open International Journal of Informatics (OIJI) Vol. 5 Iss. 2 (2017)

Effect of Social Media on Human Interpersonal


Communication: A Review
Doris Hooi-Ten Wonga*, Chen-Siang Phangb, Nurazean
Maarop a, Ganthan Narayana Samya, Roslina Ibrahima,
Rasimah Che Mohd Yusoff a, Pritheega Magalingama,
Nurulhuda Firdaus Mohd Azmia.
a
Advanced Informatics School, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Jalan Sultan Yahya Petra, 54100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
b
Unversiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Jalan Universiti, 39100 Kampar, Malaysia.

Abstract

Nowadays, social media sites have become very popular and provide more convenient
lifestyle to the people today. It has modernized the way people connect, interact and
socialize with each other. Due to proliferate of social websites and applications, social
media has become an indispensable part of life with the increase in complexities of
contemporary times. Besides, the variety of social networking platforms delivered by
developers gives end user most likely to facilitate communication by sharing through
text, video and audio streams. As a matter of fact, the diversity of entertainments in
social media sites might cause an individual over spending time on the computer or
smartphone. These circumstances show that people might physically become inactive
to learn new knowledge and lack of interest to go for outdoor activities. The main
purpose of this study is to find out the communication problem among people. This
study entails the investigation to discover social media is playing a key role in human’
current lifestyle.

Keywords: Social media, human communication, interpersonal communication

1. Introduction
Social media is a computer-mediated tool that having many features and
characteristics. It allows people to communicate and connect with each other by texting,
sharing or exchanging information, images or video in a virtual communities and network.
The social fabric of the society has been impact by the social media as social media
become pervasive today. The nature of social relationship is keep changing. It is near-
ubiquitous that teens and young adults are using internet nowadays [1].
_______________________________________________

* Corresponding author. E-mail address: doriswong@utm.my

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Open International Journal of Informatics (OIJI) Vol. 5 Iss. 2 (2017)
Around the world, the daily usage rate of social media is increasing. For example,
everyone owns a Facebook account due to the extremely popular growth of the social
networking sites. There are many features provided by Facebook such as it allows them to
add friends, comment on others’ status and send messages [2]. Moreover, users able to
reconnect with their long lost schoolmates and childhood friends by using Facebook.
Human behaviour is the action and experience throughout a human entire lifetime. It is
considered as the way they act and the attitude they perform daily. A lot of environment
factors can affect the human behaviour. It may change their mind or reflection to a certain
object or a specific situation. Human behaviour is greatly influenced by the attitudes on a
daily basis.
People use social media for many purposes such as to search for information or to
share interesting pictures and videos. However, there are several studies mentioned that
social media had influenced human behaviour. Social media can sway human decision-
making as well as behaviour. They use social media to connect with their family and
friends. A simple post or status may give them a huge impact. The comments or feedback
on social media may also influence the behaviour of the people. What are the
consequences on millions of users providing and receiving feedback, influencing and
being influenced? [3] The decision-making or action made by them afterwards will reflect
on how they think of the post and feedback.
This study is important because the trend of using social media in the society is
remaining arise. The form of social media is known as an underlying theme for sociability
[4]. The self-esteem will affect the communication skills of a person. Social networking
sites’ users are able to learn how to optimize their self-presentation through their profiles
which has been proposed in a research by Ellison et al. [5]. Therefore, it is important to
understand the effect of social media on human interpersonal communication.

2. Existing Works
A study by Sponsil [4], investigated the consequence of social media on
communication and self-concept of college students. In their study, they found that 50%
of the students believe that social media websites affect their self-esteem positively and
50% believe neither positively nor negatively. The students prefer face-to-face
communication more than using social media sites. They also found that social media
has affected students behaviour. The lurking behaviour is increasing from day to day.
The students prefer to look at other individual’s lifestyle even they may not know and
talk to the person before, rather than go out and meet new friends. This may give
inferences that the comments from other users will influence students’ self-concept.
Besides, this study also found that the number of friends that college students had on
their social media accounts may affect their self-concept. It found that most of the
college students have about 300 to 600 friends in their account but the number of their
friends are increasing day by day. Social media sites have created a new way of
communication but also affect individual’s self-concept [4].
A research by Gilani et al. [6] found out the influence of social media sites in altering
youngsters’ mind-set. This study found that social networking sites brings positive and
also negative impact to youth. First of all, youth is highly involved in social media. The
researcher found that the positive use of social media by youth may influence their
mind-set of socio-political awareness and enhance different skills such as develop
online communication skills or increase language proficiency. This research also found
that the extreme use of social media in educational computer labs affects their study and
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Open International Journal of Informatics (OIJI) Vol. 5 Iss. 2 (2017)
learning behaviour. Majority of the students unable to focus on their study during the
class [6]. They tend to ignore the activities and tutorials that distributed by the lecturer.
They often utilize the facility of internet in chatting, commenting or even sharing video
on social networking websites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This has
influenced their behaviour on the education field. The negative and unethical images,
video or links on social media sites also affects the youth life. They start to share useless
information or posting images that detrimental foreign relationship of country and
national dignity [6].
According to Al-Sharqi et al. [7], their research investigated the differences and
similarities of Arts and Science students’ perceptions of social media impact on social
behaviour. The purpose of the research is to find out the students’ perception towards
the advantage and disadvantage of social media. This study determine that the social
media makes students able to learn about people’s different thinking styles, connect to
others and communities, alleviate feeling of routine and boredom, and improve ability
to be open-minded. Besides, there are two uncommon factors that social media affect
the behaviour of each group of students [7]. The Science students are having interest to
respect other people’s opinion while the Arts students emphasize freedom of expression.
This impact on the social behaviour is important because it brings a lot of benefits to the
students. Furthermore, the social media also brings negative impact to the students. The
most common concerns are social media makes students become physically inactive.
After that, social media affects the students to expose negative ideas and cause
unproductivity and distraction from daily routine activity. Students also become less
sociable and mentally dull due to wasting a lot of time on social networking sites [7].
A study by Chris [8] examined on how the study habits of undergraduate students
being influenced by social media. This study discovered that many students consumed
their quality time on social media especially Facebook and WhatsApp even during their
lecture hours. This research concluded that social media is both supportive to the
students’ study habits particularly during day time but at the same time its addiction at
night hours affect their revision time negatively [8]. These findings also showed that
students were unable to exercise self-control over the interference of social media to
their revision particularly at night. Social media had affected the students’ revision
habits which made them prefer to engage in social media during night time rather than
doing revision.
A finding by Romero et al. [9] showed that the effects of social media in universities
can affect students and lecturers’ performance, decision making, communication,
engagement, trust and leadership. The researchers found that social media used by
universities students are more on public relation, branding and advertising. The social
network users utilized social media tools in a more informational and useful way. The
relationship found is medium to low despite the transparency has been promoted. The
social media affects behaviour of students in interaction and communication with
teachers or staffs. With the use of technology, the relationship among students and
lecturers has changed [9].

3. Problem Statements
Despite of the benefits and convenience of social media, the widespread and prevalent
use and over-reliance of social media would dampen an essence of communication
among people in terms of affection and intimacy.
This study intends to dig out potential problems on the communication problem
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Open International Journal of Informatics (OIJI) Vol. 5 Iss. 2 (2017)
caused by excessive dependence of social media. Such initiative is simply get neglected
as people habitually take that for granted and treat that ineffective as a mundane. People
should have aware of and take initiative to mitigate the negative impact of social media
that may bring to them.

a. Negative impact of social media on human behaviour


Social media provides human a more advanced and convenient lifestyle. It allows them
to have a convenience and comfortable way to stay connect with their parents, friends or
siblings. As the social media become more widely used by people, some problems are
slowly generated. People spend many time and attentions on social networking sites
every day. The interaction between human has been decreased. Will these new
technologies ultimately diminish face-to-face communication? [10] A lot of people
become uncomfortable with face-to-face communication. People shows that they are over
rely on using social media to communicate with each other. This is a serious problem that
people need to start to think about it. Besides, a lot of people also use social media to
conduct cyber bully. A lot of people become the victim of cyber bully especially kids
who are the primary target of perpetrators. The devastation of these online attacks can
leave deep mental scars for kids [11].

b. Social media changes human behaviour and habits


Social media have become an important part of human life. It has proven to be prosperous
in variety ways. The purpose to maintain existing offline relationships or solidify offline
connection have used by social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter [12]. Some
people habits are changing slowly because of social media. The work productivity may
reduce due to the over spending time on social media. A high work productivity person
may become a low work productivity employee. They spend time on social media just to
have their entertainment or chat with their friends rather than focus on their works. Our
ideas, emotions, health, relationships, behaviour, politics and much more had influenced
by social media [13]. Human behaviours, beliefs and even the basic health of people can
be changed due to human’s action. The actions or moves taken by human will reflect their
emotional and behaviour. It is crucial for people to know how the social media changes
their lifestyle and the society.

c. Addiction to the social media sites


Social media sites are being widely used by people in fulfilling their needs and
interaction. A lot of people use social media to facilitate and maintain the friendship or
the relationship with the family. However, the over spending time on social media has
caused a lot of negative impact to people. Some people update Facebook or use
WhatsApp for every single minutes even during they are crossing the roadside. The
frequent use of Facebook could cause addiction towards the site and influence students’
daily life at large [14]. Many people use their mobile phone connect to the internet and
use social media sites during working hour, driving on the road or having lunch. The
addiction to the social media sites becomes serious. A lot of people cannot control
themselves to spend the time on social media. Most of them use it for the purpose of
entertainment or interact with their friends.
The problem of addiction to social media is not going to reduce due to the
technologies are keep enhancing from time to time. There will be more and more social
media sites and better apps being introduced in the future.
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Open International Journal of Informatics (OIJI) Vol. 5 Iss. 2 (2017)

4. Proposed Methodology
In this study, initial pilot project will be proposed. The study proposed to use both
primary and secondary sources of data. The secondary data were from the literature review
as described in Section 2. The primary data will be collected through questionnaires. A
survey will be conducted to determine the result of the effect of social media on human
interpersonal communication. Based on the result, people can know whether the social
media brings them whether positive or negative effects. The target audiences of the survey
are students from Malaysia private and public universities. The main technology used to
conduct in this survey will be the Google Form. The survey will randomly select the
universities students and they will be asked to fill up the form. The target students
represented a homogeneous mix which is male and female, and the age range will be from
18 to 28 years old. The language use for the survey will be in English Language.
The questionnaire will be divided into four parts. In the first part, students will be
requested to respond to a general and demographic questions about their gender, age and
course programme. The type of the question is multiple choices and text based.
Respondents will also be asked about their level of association with the Internet and the
social media usage. The second part will provide more specific questions on the type of
social media that they frequently use and the purpose of using the social media. These
questions will be designed in checked box type. Students can select several answers for
each question by checking the check box provided. They will also be needed to answer the
duration of attending the social media every day.
Furthermore, the third part will be focused on the question related to respondents’
perspectives on the benefits or advantages and disadvantages of social media on social
behaviour. The Likert Scale answering type will be used on these questions. The survey
will provide 1 to 5 scale for each question to rate based on students’ opinion. For scale 5
will strongly agree to the question while for scale 1 will strongly disagree. Lastly, the
fourth part will address the question on their views on the negative aspect.

5. Conclusion
This paper discussed an overview of existing social media problems, and reviewed
various existing studies that have been done by various researchers in the social media
area.
However, the proposed methodology is believed that able to provide a proper way for
human to use social media and to examine the positive and negative effect of the social
media on human interpersonal communication.

Acknowledgement
Special thanks to Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and Universiti Tunku Abdul
Rahman.

References
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(accessed June 2017)
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