Investigating relationship between facebook use and family relationships.

Abstract

In this paper, I want to investigate the relationship between Facebook use and family relationships, in addition this is done in comparison to also face-to-face interaction with family members. I want to explore how would both the online and offline interactions with their family members affect the kind of relationship they have with their family members, and this relationship is measured in terms of three kinds of social capital, namely guidance, attachment and social integration. Through an online survey with 225 respondents and drawing upon mainly Putnam’s idea of bonding social capital, I argue that the use of Facebook is positively related to the maintaining of family relationships while based on my sample, face-to-face interactions might not always be of positive relation to maintenance of family relationships.