Reinforcement or Displacement? The Reciprocity of FtF, IM, and SNS Communication and Their Effects on Loneliness and Life Satisfaction

Abstract

Does communication on social network sites (SNSs) or instant messengers (IMsOne often hears that social network sites such as Facebook or Twitter and online instant messengers such as WhatsApp or Snapchat reduce face-to-face communication and make people lonelier and less satisfied with their lives. At the same time, one also hears that these same services instead connect people, foster communication, and increase well-being. In order to further increase our understanding of these phenomena, we asked two questions in this paper. First, does communicating via social network sites and via instant messengers reinforce or displace face-to-face communication? And second, does communicating via social network sites and via instant messengers increase or decrease loneliness and life satisfaction?In general, communication can take place via a number of channels, including face-to-face (FtF) communication, video calls, telephone calls, mail, e-mail, voicemail, text messaging/SMS, instant messengers (IMs), social network sites (SNSs), or even online virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life) or

How's Life in the Digital Age? (Summary in Spanish)

“…A study of 1 210 Dutch adolescents found that those who spent more time using instant messengers also spend more time in face-to-face interactions (Valkenburg and Peter, 2007). A positive effect of social network use on face-to-face interactions was also found in a longitudinal study using a nationally representative sample of the German population (Dienlin, Masur and Trepte, 2017).…”

“…9 The two causal pathways identified by the study were, first, a displacement of social activity, with less frequent offline contact and, second, a displacement of strong ties, with strong relationships offline replaced with more superficial ones online. Dienlin, Masur and Trepte (2017) also show that mobile devices have removed pretexts for offline encounters: where people used to meet in person for sharing photos, planning events or gossiping, such functions are now moved to the virtual world.…”

“…The competing hypothesis is that the Internet reinforces offline relationships and that computer-mediated communication increases offline contact and social capital (Shklovski, Kraut and Rainie (2006); Boase et al, 2006;Johnston et al, 2011;Burke, Marlow and Lento, 2010). By increasing the overall volume of communication, online communication also facilitates increases face-to-face interactions (Dienlin, Masur and Trepte, 2017). In this sense, the rise of the Internet has commonalities with the arrival of the telephone, which greatly enhanced social connections (Fischer, 1992).…”

“…Despite the mixed insights from the literature, substantial evidence supports the idea that online social contact does complement offline interactions, especially when considering the active use of social networks (Howard, Rainie and Jones, 2001;Valkenburg and Peter, 2007;Johnston et al, 2011;Aharony, 2015;Dienlin, Masur and Trepte, 2017). In addition, in European countries, data from the European Quality of Life Survey highlight a moderately strong cross-country correlation between frequent internet use and people's satisfaction with their social life (Figure 2.24).…”

The New Window to Athletes’ Soul – What Social Media Tells Us About Athletes’ Performances

“…In this paper, we define performance as the effectiveness with which people (i.e., athletes) perform activities that contribute to predefined goals and outcomes (i.e., sporting success) [21]. Existing research on the impact of social media on users' performances is two-fold: While a couple of studies have revealed the positive side of social media (e.g., [22,23])for instance, the usage of LinkedIn can result in knowledge sharing and dissemination, or YouTube can be used for training and recruitment [11] social media's negative impact on performance is evident in the majority of studies. These studies commonly report that pervasive social media usage can, for instance, result in technology dependency and excessive usage, which in turn can lead to negative outcomes for users' performances [16,18,24].…”