The Facebook Effect

Online networking changes how we relate personally and professionally.

Made many Facebook friends? Tweeting much on Twitter? Online social networking has its own rules and etiquette, and has created new kinds of relationships. University of Kansas researcher Nancy Baym, PhD, has been exploring the online communication culture, particularly focusing on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. How has this increasingly popular form of communication been shaping the way people relate to each other?

The enormously popular Facebook now hosts 175 million active users. While the site was initially created to keep young Harvard students connected, the fastest growing segment of users is now those over age 35, research indicates, and users visit Facebook and similar sites several times a day.

"Different people have different reasons for compulsive Facebook use," Baym said in a pubic statement. "But I think it comes down to the fact that there's a continuous dribble—there's always something new—so every time you go something has changed; somebody has updated their status; someone has sent you a request; someone has posted an item. So it's a continuous link of hanging out in the halls with your friends between classes or hanging around the water cooler at the office." 

Facebook profiles boast anywhere from fifty friends to one thousand; how has the nature of friendship really been affected by this type of connection?

"You can ask somebody, 'Of your 300 Facebook friends how many are actually friends?' and people will say, 'Oh, 30 or 40 or 50,'" Baym, an associate professor of communication studies, said publicly. "But what having a lot of weak-tie relationships is giving you access to are a lot of resources that you wouldn't otherwise have.” 

The exposure to a larger network of people, while perhaps not providing close-knit relationships, may serve more practical purposes, Baym adds. Making connections with people in far-off locations or with eclectic interests may be enriching and offer new experiences.

“We do tend to cluster in relationships with strong ties to people that are pretty similar to ourselves. So they don't necessarily know a whole lot that we don't know. They haven't necessarily been a lot of places that we haven't been,” she explained. “They can't volunteer to show us around Sydney, Australia, or give advice on a good reading on a topic. So there are all of these little bits of information and wisdom and social support that people can provide each other when they have a weak-tie relationship—and they can really open up access to resources that we wouldn't have otherwise." 

Does online social networking possibly present a danger of people losing their social skills during face-to-face or phone interaction? “Absolutely, it already has,” says communication expert Leslie Ungar, president of Akron, OH-based Electric Impulse Communications, Inc. (www.electricimpulse.com). Ungar helps companies and individuals optimize their professional performance by honing their communication skills.

“Yes, online social networking does present a danger,” she asserts. “People have already lost the ability to read people. With email you can’t read each other’s reactions, and you lose the idea that there is an ability to communicate otherwise,” she says. “The chances of getting a promotion coming through email are slight, yet people will resign or quit via email.”

Today, people use email and text messaging to engage in behavior that used to be personal, she adds, saying that she knows of at least one story of a couple breaking up via email before one partner even returned back from vacation.  

Professionally, as well, the loss of that personal touch can be off-putting to business leaders. The Generation Y job candidate who emailed a thank you note—rather than mailing a handwritten one—following an interview is just one example. The person who the young man had interviewed with, Ungar says, was put off by what she considered his lack of etiquette.

“I work with different generations in companies, and not knowing your audience, using the wrong technology to communicate with that audience, can damage one’s professional life,” she maintains.

“It is not a matter of if you are right or if you can do it; the rule of communication is that the audience decides what is right, not the speaker,” Ungar explains. “All communication is driven by the audience, not by the speaker.”

When it comes to deciding whether to reach someone via email, text message, phone, or hand delivered mail, Ungar says the main thing to keep in mind is how the recipient would react to the chosen method of communication.  

“Applying it to the generation that is texting, emailing or goes on Facebook or Twitter, their audience is probably not of their generation, and if they are, they all probably report to someone who is not of their generation,” she says. “Their audience is not them. To be successful, you have to know who your audience is, how to communicate with that audience. Communication needs to help us stand out; if you go for an interview, you want to stand out. That’s how we protect our value.”

That young man who emailed rather than handwrote the thank you note? He did not stand out. If he had sent a handwritten note, he would have stood out, and possibly demonstrated greater value to the woman who had interviewed him.  

Ungar says social networking is like any other new forms of technology that people had to learn to use properly. “Like any new advancement, you have to learn how to use it, like cars, or new fast machines, you have to learn appropriate uses,” she notes.  

On the other hand, do people who already have trouble with social skills feel more comfortable with online networking? “It does allow people to think that they have a higher degree of social skills or a social life,” Ungar says. “For many people three hours on Facebook is a social life, but their social skills already have gone downhill, and will continue to go downhill.” 

As for companies that think that online marketing can replace old-fashioned contact, Ungar says they are making a big mistake. “It is a poor decision to make all of your marketing online, because you still need hand-to-hand combat, you still have to be able to do that,” she contends. “Email is not marketing—it is just keeping in contact, not marketing.”

“Email will not establish a relationship, just maintain it,” Ungar explains. “You have to use the correct technology for the goal that you are trying to achieve. With the wrong technology, you will not accomplish your goal, but the problem is, is that you think you are achieving it.”  

Despite the disadvantages of online social networking, which can include real-world social isolation, diminished social skills and loss of productivity, Ungar says that at least becoming familiar with this type of communication can be positive.

“You need to be able to talk the current technological language,” she says. “The same way I tell my clients to get the Sunday New York Times so they can keep up with all kinds of issues from sports to real estate, you need to stay current on several areas so that you have enough intellectual property that you are an object of interest, and this is part of that.” 

“Just don’t put too many eggs in that basket, personally and professionally,” Ungar advises.