Abstract

Method
In March 2015, a social experiment was conducted among
32 Facebook users whom recruited through Facebook
invitation.

The main aim of this study is to decipher the social networking

site (SNSs) impact on our
1. Social connection
2. Social involvement
3. Communication quality.
Facebook was the focus since it is the most popular SNS for
people around the world; it share similarities with others SNSs.

Findings

Participants were asked to quit using Facebook, not to

posting to or checking Facebook for 3 days. At the end of
this experiment they completed a survey which included
topics related with the changes in their social life, and
Facebook usage.

Book

Discussion

The survey found that

1. SNSs are bad for our social connection

75% of participants had more than 350 Facebook friends.

Robin Dunbar s studies found that average person could have

around 150 people in his or her social group.
Dunbar It involves time investment. If you garner connections
with more people, you end up distributing your fixed amount of
social capital more thinly so the average capital per person is
lower.

However, 84% of respondents dont talk to most of their total

Facebook friends.

2. Social involvement
78% of participants dont have connections with more than 50
Facebook friend outside of SNSs
Average respondents spent 46 minutes on Facebook every day, yet
nearly half of them feel they are not successful at maintain friendship
Facebook Friend with connection
outside of Social networking sites
connection
22%

People did not become more interactive in real-life, but they

spent more time on other SNSs
the limitation of focusing on Facebook makes this hypothesis
difficult to prove or disprove.
3. Did not reduce communication quality
Most respondents dont found difficult to communicate on
Facebook, and they dont think Facebook is lack of non-verbal
cues.

no connection
78%

Participant spent about same amount of time (1.5 hour/ day) with
friends. However, 62% of participants spent more time on other
SNSs during experiment.
67% respondents dont found difficult to communicate on Facebook.
Only 37% of respondents think that Facebook is lack of non-verbal
cues
Thank you,
Principal Student Investigator (PI): Ray Fong
Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film, Brock University
Email address: rayexperiment@gmail.com

With the rapid integration of SNSs, people seems

happy to use SNSs as fast-track to achieving
meaningful relationships, thus it is important to
understand SNSs potential impacts pose to our
friendship.
Social media speaker Jay Baer said: "Maybe we
should be focused less on making a lot of
connections, and focused more on making a few
real friends."
Reference:
Dunbar, R. I. M. (1993). Coevolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (4): 681-735.
Dan Noyes (2015). The Top 20 Valuable Facebook Statistics Updated February 2015, on February 10, 2015