As social scientists, our objectives are to understand our friend’s digital behavior pattern and to identify the purpose of social media usage among them. Therefore, we have developed a set of questionnaire on the topic: Use of social media in the development and maintenance of relationships among youths in UNIMAS, for the purpose of investigating about their digital habit.
According to the data that we had collected from a total of 81 respondents that were sampled in UNIMAS, 72 (88.9%) of them answered that they use some form of social media, whereas the remaining 9 (11.1%) respondents do not. This vast difference in responses parallel that of a recent study conducted by the Malaysian Commission of Multimedia and Communication (MCMC) quoting that 64% of the Malaysian population have “social media penetration”, which means that they use some form of social media regularly (Mustafa, 2015).
We, the social scientists, are interested to find out the digital behavior among youths in UNIMAS, especially how do people use social media in the development and maintenance of relationships in their daily lives. Therefore, those who said that they do not own social media accounts were not accounted for in this study. Those who do own social media accounts are the main focus of this study, and out of these 72 respondents, they were also asked about the type of social media they use daily.
In order to investigate more about their digital behavior, the respondents were also asked about the social media accounts they update more often than others. They were asked to choose from a list of 10 most common social media sites used by youths today, but there was also an “others” option for respondents in case there are other forms of social media sites that they may use. The results showed that the most frequently used and updated social networking site is Facebook, which also echoes the findings of the study conducted by MCMC. According to that same study, 15.6 million Malaysians are active on Facebook. However, there is a difference between the type of social media used and the ones respondents update the most because social chatting applications like WhatsApp, although commonly used, provide limited room for updates, except via “statuses” which are not as visible to others as they may be on other platforms such as WeChat, which utilises a “Moments” feature similar to that of updating one’s Facebook status.
It was one of the objectives of this study to identify the purpose of social media usage among the respondents. We used a Likert scale in question 13 of the questionnaire and asked the respondents to rank the purposes of social media usage. However, in this discussion, we only decided to select 6 out of the 15 purposes initially provided that was most closely related to the development and maintenance of relationships.
The findings show that e-mail is considered important, but it is not “very important”, neither is it something they cannot live without to the majority of youths. On the other hand, most respondents felt that instant messaging was ranked of higher importance than other purposes, such as e-mail or playing games, with 40.3% saying that they “cannot live without it” and 54.2% saying it is “very important”. It is evident that instant messaging is a more popular method of communication among youths, and it is most likely to be because of the instantaneous responses that can be obtained, and its easy access as opposed to e-mails. Although it is not a priority, the majority of respondents (43.0%) also feel that being part of online communities is important to them. This echoes the Uses and Gratifications Theory that states that people use the media for social integrative needs, to feel included and to forge friendships and companionships. Playing games was also included in this discussion because many games nowadays encompass gaming communities, where players can communicate with other players all around the world. The ranking of importance was balanced between “very important” (27.8%), “important” (29.2%) and “not important at all” (27.8%). This is probably because gaming is not a common past time, and among those who frequently play games, being part of these communities and chat rooms is important, but not something they cannot live without.
The respondents who said they use some form of social media were also asked if they prefer communicating via social media or face-to-face (interpersonal) communication in question 14. The findings show that respondents generally prefer face-to-face communication (51.4%) over communication via social media (48.6%), although only by a narrow margin. The respondents were then asked to choose between a set of reasons for the answers they had provided in question 14, and multiple responses were also allowed.
From the result obtained, it is evident that those who prefer communication via social media use social media as a tool of convenience because it saves time (26 responses), cost (26 responses, and bridges geographical barriers (24 responses) that might separate their friends and family from them. Some also find that social media can veil embarrassment (21 responses). We asked some of them why they felt that social media can prevent embarrassment, and they responded by saying that communication via social media gives them time to formulate their thoughts and opinions before penning them down into words, thus reduces the chances of embarrassment.
Those who prefer face-to-face communication generally feel so because it is easier for them to express their true feelings (29 responses). They also find that it is easier for them to express their opinions and thoughts (20 responses) via face-to-face communication, and at the same time, they are able to see other people’s facial expressions (25 responses) and gauge their responses. 22 respondents also felt that face-to-face communication was better in order to avoid misunderstandings that might occur. When probed further, one respondent answered that it was because some people might not be fluent in a particular language, thus the aid of body language and facial expressions can help them avoid misunderstandings.
The respondents were also asked about their frequency of keeping in touch with different groups of people. It is evident that most respondents keep in touch with close friends at least twice a week. Half of the respondents said that they communicate with their course-mates and other friends three times a week, and when asked further, some of them said that it is necessary because many group discussions about academics-related topics are conducted via social media. Most respondents also communicate with their family via social media at least twice a week; whereas most of them (38.9%) keep in touch with people they know who are far away once a week. A whopping 73.6% of respondents said that they never communicate with strangers via social media, whereas none of them communicate with strangers more than three times a week. They were then probed further about why they never communicate with strangers via social media, and many of them said it was “dangerous” to do so because of the recent rise in cybercrime. Overall, 93.1% of respondents felt that social media has made it easier to communicate with family and friends, whereas a mere 6.9% said that social media has not made it easier. The few respondents who answered “no” were asked about the reasons why they felt that way, and they said that it was because not all their friends and family own social media accounts, so it made no difference to them.
Next, it was found that 72.2% of respondents felt that using social media affected their development and maintenance of relationships, whereas 27.8% did not. Those who said “yes” were then asked to choose what they felt was the positive implications of communication via social media and the negative implications. The responses of positive implications were balanced between strengthen relationships (34.7%), dare to express feelings (30.6%) and saves time and cost (34.7%). However, a majority of respondents felt that social media while able to strengthen relationships, also has the ability to weaken relationships as a result of reduced face-to-face communication (40.3%). 37.5% of them felt that misunderstandings can happen easily with social media, whereas only 22.2% feel that trust issues are a negative implication of social media use in communication.
Overall, out of all the respondents who answered that social media has affected the maintenance and development of their relationships, 77.5% said that it has affected them positively, whereas 22.5% of them said that it has affected them negatively. Finally, 81.9% of respondents said that they will continue to use social media in the near future, whereas 18.1% said that they will not use social media in the future anymore. The reasons why they felt that way varied, with some citing convenience as the main reason for continued use, and cybercrime and questions about cyber safety arose among those who said that they did not want to use social media anymore in the future.
The impact of the advent of social media is undeniable, especially in the field of communication. Nowadays, almost everyone owns a social media account, whether it is via a computer or on a smartphone. With that being said, it has been the goal of many researchers to identify the impact of social media on communication. Our study centered on youths in UNIMAS, and we were able to identify how youths use social media in the maintenance and development of their relationships. Firstly, we found that a vast majority of youths in this area do not use social media to forge new friendships with strangers online because of the recent rise in cybercrime, and they are vigilant about people they do not know. However, most of them believe that social media has helped them keep in touch with friends and family, thus, aided in the maintenance of relationships.
Besides that, we found that the digital behavior of youths in UNIMAS is they use social media mainly for communication purposes. The most popular social media used for communication is Facebook, and that other forms of social media such as Instagram, Twitter, WeChat and Skype have yet to gain popularity among youths in UNIMAS.
Finally, we found that a majority of youths in UNIMAS feel that social media has generally left a positive impact on their existing relationships, because it narrows geographical gaps. It is also much more convenient as it saves time and cost that would normally be incurred when meeting a friend or family member outside of one’s home. On the other hand, if it wasn’t for geographical distance, they would still prefer face-to-face communication because of the genuineness of being physically present as opposed to facing a computer or phone screen. They also believe that face-to-face communication is better in order to avoid misunderstandings that might occur, because they are afraid of ruining their relationships with family and friends. However, there is still a small portion of youths who prefer communication via social media because they are too shy and are afraid of saying the wrong thing, therefore would prefer to have time to formulate their thoughts and opinions before saying things, and this is a luxury face-to-face communication cannot offer.
Reference
Mustafa, M. (2015). Malaysians spend five hours online daily and it is mostly on social media, says report. The Malaysian Insider. Retrieved from http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/malaysians-spend-five-hours-online-daily-and-it-is-mostly-on-social-media-s#sthash.38rONcYH.dpuf
By Khoo Gui Ling (41692)
