In my experience, social media has had a very complex effect on real-life relationships. There are positives and there are negatives, but the overall impact is difficult to quantify and can vary by user. The creation of an online avatar is a double-edged sword. Though it can do some amazing things for relationships, it also serves to undermine a lot of our real-world interactions.
The best thing social media has done for me personally is make it much easier to stay in contact with old friends and acquaintances. Prior to the creation of the Facebook and Twitters of the world, maintaining any sort of relationship with people from the past required a great deal of effort. If you wanted to talk to them and catch up, you'd have to either know their phone number, address or email, and then go out of your way to initiate a conversation. If you didn't know the person well enough to have this information, finding and contacting them would be near impossible. As a result, one's relationship with them would fade, even disappear, as soon as they stopped seeing them. Social media provides a way around that, allowing us to easily maintain contact with these otherwise forgotten people at the click of a button.
Evidently this benefit of social media isn't merely anecdotal. An infographic by Schools.com posted on Mashable purports that 84% of people use social media to stay in touch with faraway friends. Other ways people use social media to maintain relationships are to share good news (62%) and schedule plans (16%) (Laird). Another benefit the Laird article points out is that social media makes it easier to foster new relationships. In their survey, 83% of respondents said social networking helps shy and lonely people make new friends, while 26% said social media is good for facilitating new friendships in general. Though I'm not the type to try and meet new people on the Internet, I think it still serves as an overall benefit of social media.
But aside from all the positive effects social media can have on a relationship, it can definitely inhibit certain aspects of life. Nowadays almost anywhere you go you're bound to see at least a few people with their eyes glued to their phone. Whether it's people at a party that don't want to converse with others, or concert goers that are eager to share their experience, the use of social media has become so ubiquitous that we often miss out on other things happening around us. The same article I referenced earlier notes that 24% of people surveyed have missed important moments in person because they were busy using social media. Even though I myself am very wary of "overusing" social media, every once in a while I catch myself getting sucked in for too long. It's an annoying habit that I think takes away from some of the simple pleasures in life.
There are a couple other areas where I think social media hurts relationships as well. One thing I see all the time is people creating alternate or embellished personas via Twitter or Facebook. Some of the quietest, sweetest people I know have profiles that give off a completely different vibes. An article in Psychology Today supports my observation, noting that social distance and false intimacy are two of the factors leading to these "fake" personas (Formica).
Social distance refers to the idea that happenings on social media carry less weight to us than something in the real world might. We're observing peoples' lives from a faraway, public vantage point; a place where our feelings are less involved. It's almost like seeing someone get shot in a movie versus real life. In both cases you know what's happening, but the person in the movie seems less real to us, and therefore doesn't affect our feelings in the same way. When that's the case, it becomes much easier for users of social media to freely post thoughts without really thinking about what they're saying. It gives them the comfort to step out of their normal lives and into a new online identity. False intimacy on the other hand refers to the connection we might feel by reading a social media feed despite not being involved. Seeing vacation photos from a middle school friend might make me feel like I have a deeper insight into his life, but in reality it's an inauthentic connection with no real intimacy. This could affect how I interact with this person even if our relationship hasn't changed at all in the real world. The two terms sort of run against each other, but both play a role in our creation of false personas.
So although social media can be an excellent tool to connect with old friends, make new ones, share news and make plans, it comes with extra baggage that weighs down the benefits. The distance it provides can drive people to act differently, and sometimes it can take away from precious real life moments. I don't think there's a definitive answer to whether or not social media is good or bad for relationships- but it certainly depends on the motivations of the user.
References:
Formica, Michael. "The False Face of Our Social Media Persona." Psychology Today.
N.p., 18 Oct. 2010. Web. 4 Mar. 2014.
<http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/enlightened-living/201010/the-false-face-our-social-media-persona>.
Laird, Sam. "Is Social Media Destroying Real-World Relationships?" Mashable. N.p., 14 June 2012. Web. 04 Mar. 2014. <http://mashable.com/2012/06/14/social-media-real-world-infographic/>
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