Social media behaviour damaging offline relationships: Kaspersky Lab
dubai — Several respondents in the UAE have disclosed that their relationships with their family, friends, and colleagues has changed-ting less face-to-face, as a result of social media.
The latest research by Kaspersky Lab showed that 36 per cent of UAE respondents have reduced face to face communication with their parents, 37 per cent with their children, 22 per cent with their partners, and 48 per cent said that in person contact with their friends has reduced because they can see and communicate with them via social media.
Your behaviour on social media also has the ability to adversely affect your offline relationships the study found. While we would expect parents not to approve of their children’s online behavior, it is often the other way round. More than a fifth of parents admit that their relationship with their children worsened after they had seen their parents in embarrassing circumstances on social media. 11 per cent of parents in the UAE admit that relationships with their children have been damaged as a result of them being seen in a compromising situation on social media. In con- trast, only six per cent of parents in the UAE said they were annoyed by their children’s online behaviour.
In addition, nine per cent of UAE residents also said that their relationship with their spouse or partner has been damaged as a result of them being seen in an inappropriate situation on social media. “We live in a globalised and highly mobile world resulting in distances between partners and family members. Digital communication is an opportunity to bridge the gaps in our modern lives caused by living in different cities or countries. However, digital communication cannot replace face-to-face communication - at least not always and not completely,” Dr. Astrid Carolus, media psychologist at the University of Würzburg.
Carolus warns that although it seems that the quality of our relationships is improving, people cannot always evaluate their online communication objectively. “Under certain circumstances they perceive their online communication as ‘hyper-personal communication‘ and thus they can misread and over-interpret the messages on social media. We feel especially close; we blind out the rather negative, focus on the possible positive intentions behind a message, and over-interpret.”
With the study finding that although social media can help ease communication channels and bridge time zones and distance barriers, it doesn’t always make people happy. It can strain relationships as well as leaving people feeling down and upset, as they constantly compare their lives to those of others. The hunt for ‘likes’ and social validation leads people to share increasing amounts of private information on social media platforms.— rohma@khaleejtimes.com