MGT 435

BUSINESS RESEARCH

FALL 2020

“SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION AND

IT’S EFFECT ON FAMILY RELATIONS

/ COMMUNICATION/ BEHAVIOR”

PRESENTED BY:

CHARBEL BOU TANOS

PRESENTED TO:

DR. LINDOS DAOU

Introduction

1- Literature Review:

1.1- Relationship between social media and people

1.2- Concept of social media addiction

1.3- Importance of family relationships and communication

1.4- Effect of social media addiction on behavior

1.5- Effect of social media addiction on families relationship

2- Methodology:

2.1- Research Design

2.2- Sampling Method

2.3- Data Collection

2.4- Questionnaire

3- Results &Interpretations

4- Recommendations

5- Conclusion

6- References
Introduction

We live in a world where technology has taken over, and changed our lives completely. With

technology comes social media. Social media has become a big part of our lives where

applications such as Instagram, twitter, Facebook, etc… have grown at an enormous rate.

Nowadays it is very common to see people using their electronic devices for the purpose

accessing social media platforms; the constant usage of social media platforms has changed the

communication between people. Most people are spending most of their time in the virtual social

media work instead of maintaining quality time and communicate with the people close to them.

Nowadays, people’s relationships with their close ones have changed due to social media,

because of the excess addiction of constantly using it, so it is important to examine the

controversy about how social media addiction has an effect on family members, relations, and

behaviors: How does people addiction to social media affect their relationships on the long-run?

Therefore the purpose of this study is to identify how to consistent use of social media is

effecting family members relationships and communication. The benefiters of this study are

people who are interested to figuring out how the social media addiction is causing changes in

the relationship with their family members and the communication process between them. This

study will help people have a better understanding of how to manage their time on social media

as well as to put effort into their relationship with their closest people. The added value behind
this study is to understand the importance for managing time for the use of social media and

prioritizing the importance of maintaining relationships with family members.

Literature Review

Relationship between social media and people

Social media has developed at such a fast pace that there is barely enough research to draw upon.

Social media refers to computer mediated technologies that allows people to be able to share and

create content such as ideas images, videos with one another to different platform and networks.

Moreover, social media’s main role is to connect individuals and even communities from all over

the world. Nowadays, social media has become a place where a person can express his/her own

story, identity and influence millions of people to make changes in their lives. People spend a lot

of time on social media every single day which has a major effect on one’s behavior positively

and negatively.

Concept of social media addiction

Individuals have principal needs to have a place where they can belong to and relate to, for

Which relational communication is the key. In the latest years, with the improvement of data

innovation, particularly with the quick multiplication of Internet-based applications and social

media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, etc.) the methods of relational correspondence

have definitely changed. The universal online media stages and the simple access to the Internet

achieve the potential for social media addiction. Social media nowadays plays a crucial role in a
person’s life, people are starting to live their lives depending on social media, following trends

all over the world. These trends that are found on social media are affecting an individual's

perception when it comes to everything they see on social media, this leads to behavioral

changes where a person starts to become obsessive towards the use of social media, spending her

or his time on different platforms instead of living in the actual world.

This behavioral change and obsession are slowly being transformed into an obsessive addiction

that creates the constant urge to be active on social media because it brings them a certain

comfort zone. “A study was conducted by California state university found that individuals that

visited social media platforms 58 times a week were 3 times more depressed and socially

isolated compared to those who used social media fewer than 9 times a week” (Hilliard, Parisi,

2019-2020 clinically reviewed and edited), therefore social media addiction has an effect on

one’s mental health.

Importance of family relationships and communication

The consistent use of social media today has taken away the opportunity for people to enhance

their relationships with their family members and close ones disrupting the communication

between them. These days, social media addiction has been very widespread leading people to be

isolated from their loved ones because of now social media is affecting their behavior making

them not prioritize quality time with their close ones and family members. Family relationships

and communication are very essential because they create a real comfortable environment unlike

the virtual one created on social media. Healthy family relationships can foster a feeling of
security, thus facilitating the communication between family members. Although social media

now plays an important role in a person’s life, real communications and real relationships should

always be on the A-side on one’s priorities because the real genuine communication and

relationship between family members is the key to a healthy life.

Effect of social media addiction on behavior

Being addicted to social media can change a person’s behavior with time. To further explain,

being constantly active on social media can develop several bad habits and effect one’s mental

health. Being that, the person starts to become lazy, stay up late at night basically disrupting his

sleeping schedule, and mainly isolating him/herself thus developing depression and anxiety.

Social media has become a huge influence to people that they can’t help not get affected by it,

seeing other people’s post and starting to compare themselves to those people, and trying to

imitate everything they see online from trends, to clothing, to lifestyle, this built many

insecurities and low self-esteem that were once none existent, reflecting on their behavior

towards others being more aggressive. Without forgetting that social media addiction means

affecting one’s behavior academically, in other words it leads to a decreasing academic

performance. (Hou, Yubo, 2019). We can state the following hypothesis, H1: Social media

addiction leads to mental health conditions, thus the person’s behavior will be negatively

affected.
Effect of social media addiction on families relationships

In life, people develop different relationships overtime and the one that stands out the most is the

family relationship. Earlier, when the internet and social media were nowhere existent, family

bonding and communication was present. Social media addiction shaped people’s life by

damaging communication and the bond between family members. Being active on social media

and interacting online became more important than greeting close ones. Social media has

negatively affected how relations are being built nowadays specifically in family oriented

countries like Lebanon. It is very common to see in a Lebanese household a family sitting

together, yet spending most of their times scrolling through social media feeds, no effort and

communication is being made, thus effecting the relationship between family members. In fact,

based on “Stat Counter”, Lebanese people spend an average of 2 to 3 hours interacting on social

media platforms, and another fact also stated on “Stat Counter” is that the most used social

media platform in Lebanon is Facebook with a percentage of 69.42% stated in November 2020.

In addition, today’s generation would rather spend their time in their bedrooms on smart devices,

rather than go outside and do fun activities, exercise, and bond with their friends and families.

This addiction on social media is negatively affecting the relationship aspect.

With all that being said, we can come up with the hypotheses that H2: social media addiction

has a negative effect on family relationships. In addition, some people tend to isolate themselves

while using social media which leads to an increase in disruption of the family bonds. H3: social

media addiction effects the communication between individuals.

Research Design

 Research strategy: Our strategy will be a survey, specifically an electronic questionnaire.

People will be asked a set of 10 questions that will help us to get to the conclusion in our

research that is effect that social media addiction has on behavior, communication, and

family relations.

 Extent of research interference: Minimal interference, since it is an electronic

questionnaire sent to people online, so each person responds without any biased answer,

without any interference from our group.

 Study Setting: Non-contrived setting, the people will be able to answer wherever they are

in their natural environment and actual locations, since the survey sent is an online

questionnaire.

 Unit of analysis: Individuals, the study is conducted on individuals, the responders of the

questionnaire who are our friends, classmates and family members, where each one of

them is receiving the questionnaire separately, so each respondent will have her or his

own answer.

 Time Horizon: It is a cross-sectional study since the questionnaire is being sent at a single

point in time, to one sample.

Our topic is about social media addiction and its effect on family relationships, behavior, and

communication with others. In our study, the population targeted is individuals, through the use

of non-probability technique specifically convenience sampling technique which refers to

collecting information of individuals of a population who are convenient to provide us with

answers in the fastest and the most efficient way. Our questionnaire was sent through Whatsapp

to respondents who are available to provide us with the necessary information despite them using

social media or not.

Data Collection

An electronic questionnaire was created on Google Docs containing 10 questions that are divided

as follow: 3 demographic questions, and the other 7 are related to our topic which is social media

addiction and its effect on family relations, communication, and behavior. After receiving a

confirmation from our doctor regarding the, we sent it through a link via Whatsapp, where 46

people answered the questionnaire in total. The survey is composed of 9 close-ended questions

and 1 open-ended question, an ordinal scale was used to ask our respondents about their age

(question 2), a nominal scale was used to ask questions about gender (question 1), level of

education (question 3), and social media platforms used (questions 4&5), an interval scale

question about how many hours spent on social media every day (question 6), a Likert scale

question to know the level of social media dependence and if social media has affected the

relationship with family negatively (question 7&8), a dichotomous question was used for true or

false answer related to social media being a distraction when going out with friends (question 9),
and finally an open-ended question where the respondents describe how social media affected

their behavior towards others (question 10).

Questionnaire

Dear participants,

Hello we are a group of students from NDU conducting a research on how social media

addiction influences on family relations, communication, and behavior. The following

questionnaire will help us have a better understanding to our research. Note that your responses

to the questionnaire will be confidential, and only our group will have access to your answers.

1. What is your gender?

A. Male

B. Female

C. Prefer not mentioning

2. What is your age?

A. Under 18

B. Between 18 and 25

C. Between 26 and 40

D. Above 40

3. What is your highest level of education?

A. Baccalaureate degree

B. Bachelor’s degree
 C. Master’s degree

D. Doctorate degree

E. Other (please specify):

4. Which of the following social media platforms do you use the most?

A. Instagram

B. Facebook

C. YouTube

D. Twitter

E. Linkedin

F. Other (please specify):

5. What do you use social media for the most?

A. News

B. Messaging friends and family

C. Sharing content

D. Work related

E. Other (please specify):

6. How much time do you spend on social media every day?

A. Less than an hour

C. 2 to 3 hours

D. 3 hours +

7. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 the highest: How much are you social

media dependent:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

8. At some point in life, has social media affected your relationship with family negatively?

A. Disagree

B. Neutral

C. Agree

9. You find yourself distracted by social media when you’re out with friends.

A. True

B. False
 10. Based on personal experience describe briefly if social media has ever effected your

behavior towards others?

Thank you for your cooperation, and for answering our questionnaire.

Best Regards,

NDU students

Results and Interpretation

Male (69.6%) falling between ages 18 and 25 (76.1%) and most of them are currently university

students fulfilling their bachelor’s degree or have graduated (41.3%).

According to our questionnaire results, the most common used social media platforms are

Instagram (87%), YouTube (50%), and Twitter (26.1%) and this reflects that our respondents use

social media mostly for fun and the purpose of entertainment. In addition, based on the pie chart

above, it is evident that most of our respondents use social media for the purpose of sharing

content (28.3%) and for messaging friends and family (39.1%) and Instagram, YouTube, Twitter

allow people to share their content and message their loved ones. This proves the theory that

social media addiction can lead to loneliness and isolation because of how people invest their

time being active on social media platforms instead of being present in the moment.
As we can see, most of our respondents spend more than 3 hours on social media everyday being

(63%), which exceeds the average time of 2 hours that is spent on social media daily as stated

previously in the literature review. This shows that in fact people nowadays have become

addicted to social media. Regarding social media dependence, we can see that (30.4%) of

respondents rate their social media dependence an 8/10, being considered a high scale, without

forgetting the (15.2%) of the respondents who rate their dependence to social media a 10/10.

This shows that indeed social media addiction has become an issue nowadays.

Regardless that some respondents are neutral when it comes to social media addiction affecting

their relationships with their family negatively (34.8%); we can see that (26.1%) of the
respondents agree that social media affected their relationship with their family in a negative

way. We can say that it is true that social media has a negative impact on the relationship of a

person with his or her family. Moving on to the next chart, we can see that (56.5%) of the

respondents do not get distracted by social media when they are out with friends whom they

interact with through social media, this shows that social media users are living in the same

bubble and this adds on the hypothesis that social media addicts have developed a negative

relationship with their family since they spend time with their friends online and offline more

than their family. However, it is important to notice that (43.5%) of the respondents said that

they get distracted by social media when they are out with their friends, so this proves our second

hypothesis that states social media addiction creates a lack of communication between people.
Regarding the open-ended question, the most common answers were the above. This projects

that social media negatively effects a person’s behavior where they get angry and aggressive

towards others, some others feel lazy and lonely, and some respondents said that social media

effected their behavior by making them insecure with a low self-esteem, so they tend to imitate

others on the internet instead of being themselves. This shows that, social media addiction has a

negative effect on a person’s behavior as stated in one of our hypotheses.

After conducting this research and interpreting the results, we thought of several

recommendations that could be useful and beneficial that could help social media addicts to

manage their time in social media and prioritize being present with themselves, their family and

friends.

 Using social media as a means of bonding with family: Instead of being active on social

media platforms all alone watching YouTube for example, use that time to bond with

your family by watching videos together.

 Scheduling social media use: Instead of wasting all your time being active on social

media and not being productive, specify a certain time of the day to use social media and

make plans with family and friends. Instead of chatting with friends for hours, invite

them over or hang out with them and have a present conversation.

 Limiting comparison to people on social media: Not everything that is seen on social

media is true, since people can easily manipulate their audience with a fake life they

show us, like famous people and influencers. It is important to stop comparing your life

to others, be grateful of what you have.

 Using social media for productivity: Instead of being lazy and lying in bed while

scrolling through social media applications, download some applications that could make

you productive (sports & fitness) and beneficial to your academics or potential business

plans.

 Improving your social media use: Why stay in your room liking pictures of others when

you can go on a beautiful hike, or on a bike ride enjoying the view and taking pictures

that you can post on social media and receive likes yourself instead?
Conclusion

This world is loaded with current innovation which permits social media to affect individuals

whether this effect is positive or negative. The impact of web-based media on behavior,

communication and family relations were investigated through a study of a sample of people in

Lebanon. The outcomes from the survey conducted generally came from individuals somewhere

in the range of 18 and 25 years of age, which isn't a shock since the majority of the individuals

between those ages were extraordinarily affected by innovative advancements in technology.

This study is centered on the understanding of how social media addiction has an effect on

certain aspects on people’s lives negatively. We can’t deny that social media nowadays is a big

part of our lives, changing the way communication works between people since people have

become so invested in being active on different platforms creating a sort of addiction. Based on

our research and the results regarding our questionnaire, we can conclude that social media

addiction indeed has a negative effect on family relations, communication, and behavior.

However, this can be managed through different methods and ways, and hopefully make the

people look at the positive side of social media use instead of using it the toxic way. For life is

about quality time with family and friends, a healthy mindset, and an active communication that

brings laughs and positive vibes.

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