With social media use on the rise, some are beginning to question and compare the benefits and drawbacks of investing time in these online accounts and profiles. There is no doubt that social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and even Instagram can have huge advantages that make everyday life easier, such as easy access to information, the ability to communicate with people faster, and even being able to keep up with individuals all over the world. On the other hand, however, social media brings concerns of privacy issues, false information, and several bigger, more serious problems such as identity development. This is a important not only because it changes an individual as a person, but sites like these also affect the way that one goes about approaching and creating attachments, ultimately letting social media take priority over friends and family. As a result of social media, recent generations are becoming more focused on doing things faster and easier, rather than putting the time and effort into appreciating and getting to know new people. In order to avoid this, avid users must slow down networking usage and focus on spending time and getting to know the people around them. However, with social media being used as heavily as it is, it does have an impact on personal characteristics and several other identity qualities, causing the correlation between these addictive sites and the formation of relationships between family and friends to come into question. Through analyzation and research, one can see that over use of social media accounts have a negative impact on the way people interact in general, leading to poor communication skills, ultimately changing the way one views and maintains relationships. Social media negatively affects relationships with family and friends as a consequence of cyberbullying, lack of face to face communication, and lastly, obsessive parental control leading to an invasion of privacy, which, in turn, diminishes the quality and depth of personal connections and makes society more concerned with technology, rather than personal relationships and experiences. 

Today, more than half of the world's population uses social networking sites regularly, ultimately changing the way that relationships are built and fostered. These sites have an impact on the mind, as well as how individuals go about interacting and treating one another. Cyberbullying, the act of bullying or threatening a person using technology such as social media, has recently become a rising problem because of social media growth and has several serious outcomes, self esteem issues and confidence problems being two examples. Something as simple as a rude comment online, to full on embarrassment over Facebook by a peer can shift the way that an individual views both themselves and others, changing the way victims go about personal interactions. These self confidence problems make it harder for individuals to want to form relationships in hopes of avoiding being made fun of and bullied. As a result of this new negative view, forming working, trustworthy relationship has become increasingly difficult for those who experience cyberbullying on social media sites. Online harassment leads not only to harsh self assessment, but also overall lower self esteem, as discussed in the research article, "Cyberbullying and Self Esteem", published by The American School Health Association. The study describes the correlation between victims of cyberbullying and their levels of self esteem, stating that, "cyberbullying victims and offenders both have significantly lower self esteem than those who have not been cyberbullying victims or offenders" (Hinduja and Patchin 5). Lower self esteem causes various other issues, such as problems confiding in people and even peer rejection, another effect of social media which can potentially lead to hardships maintaining healthy relationships with friends and family, a harmful, continuous cycle. Another direct result of peer rejection is the lack of protection from peers that they do not have. Cyber Bullying leads to peer rejection, which ultimately ends up changing one's social reputation. This, in return, creates difficulties making and keeping friends. If an individual does not have friends, he or she also has no one to confide in or protect them from damaging situations, such as cyberbullying. The two authors explain the vicious cycle of peer rejection, explicating that, "Because these children are isolated within the peer groups, their peers are not able to protect them from victimization by either intervening or showing disapproval towards their attacker" (Wright and Li 3). With no one to talk to or build friendships with, victims often feel alone, friendless, and worthless, producing issues trusting and conserving relationships with family and acquaintances, as well as various other depressive symptoms. Studies have found a correlation between rejection and these aggressive behaviors because of the fact that these victims, not possessing qualities needed to build strong relationships, have no one to rely on. Overall, individuals that experience cyber bullying and peer rejection tend to be more angry, depressed, and antisocial (Wright and Li 2). Victims also, as stated in "Cyberbullying: Who Hurts, and Why", by Michelle Ramos and Diana Bennett, "have higher levels of phobic anxiety, paranoia, and suicidal ideation and attempts than non-victimized counterparts", which understandably complicates the social process and makes is harder to interact and get to know others (Ramos and Bennett 5). Michelle F. Wright and Yan Li also discuss these effects in their article, "The Association Between Cyber Victimization and Subsequent Cyber Aggression" saying that, "peer rejection may be a source of strain contributing to adolescents' engagement in aggressive behaviors" (Wright and Li 2). This can end up straining relationships, causing them to be built of off negative qualities such as trust issues, rage, and despondency. Not only does rejection from peers lead to these troubling, relationship altering side effects, it also causes a lack of social skills, another side effect that makes it increasingly difficult for victims to create and preserve healthy connections with both friends and family (Wright and Li 2).Those affected by cyberbullying tend to pick up several of these antisocial behaviors. As a result of gaining these antisocial behaviors from social media, victims may not know how to make friends or talk to them, often creating awkwardness between the two. These behaviors, Wright and Li reiterate, have several serious outcomes such as, "social anxiety, substance abuse, poor academic performance, low school engagement, and sexual risk behaviors", all actions that make retaining important personal relationships exceedingly difficult (Wright and Li 2). These personal relationships are all negatively affected by social media sites through cyberbullying changing the way that individuals view themselves and others, rejection from peers and classmates, the result of aggression and depression,and lastly, the outcome of mental and physical health problems.

Likewise, communication is another main factor that plays a role in the negative effects of social networking. Social media today makes it exceptionally simple to interact with people, be it through Facebook messages, emails, or even direct messages to an account. With the ease of communication online, individuals are missing out on important, relationship forming elements without even noticing. One huge downfall of communicating using social media is that it is simply impersonal and not nearly as involved as face to face conversations. This can end up changing how individuals go about forming relationships, as well as weakens personal connections, resulting in depression, anxiety, and other social issues. Lori Ann Wagner, in her article "How Social Media Alters Human Relationships", states how, "face-to-face meetings have been replaced with interactions through various social media platforms" and because of this, individuals "don't tend to deepen our relationships- they tend to exist in the status quo" (Wagner 4). As a result of these objective relationships, people who use social media regularly tend to lack communication skills needed to form strong personal bonds. If an individual does not possess communication skills that are learned through personal interactions with other beings, such as attentive listening and speaking, creating friendships and other relationships becomes increasingly difficult. Missing out on learning and experiencing these connections also makes relationships detached and dispassionate, showing just how important personal communication is and how social media changes this. Another negative side effect of communication through social media is the lack of important social cues that face-to-face conversations rely on. Social cues are necessary in understanding, reading, and getting to know someone on a deeper level, so missing out on these signs makes relationships weaker and objective. Ramirez and Zhang, authors of "The Effects of Modality Switching on Relational Communication", explore the importance of social cues during face to face conversation, as well as the downfall of online communication, saying, "reductions in visual, aural, and contextual cues are predicted to produce less awareness of one's partner and colder, less personalized communication, both of which are detrimental to relationship formation" (Ramirez and Zhang 4). As a result of lack of face-to-face conversation, individuals miss out on the chance to verbalize personal information, ultimately making it harder to form relationships and gain deeper knowledge about a person (Ramirez and Zhang 3). Another of the several downfalls of communicating through social media is that it may lead to miscommunications between individuals, making it seemingly easier to confuse and take information the wrong way. From this misapprehension, relationships can be built off of erroneous qualities and even lies. This foundation can enfeeble relationships, causing trust problems and questions between individuals. Not only does this provoke trust issues, it leads to standoffish, introvert bonds. Social media, furthermore, makes it apparently easier to pretend to be someone else, an additional consequence. This can be done in several ways. For one, the construction of fake online profiles has become almost effortless. By falsely filling out a series of personal questions, an individual can simply create an imitation profile and profess to be someone they are not. On the other hand, lying over social media in general, whether it be through personal messages with someone, or by using another person's photos, makes it exceptionally effortless to impersonate someone, which can affect relationships and destroy trust and faith in those being deceived. Without faith and trust, two important qualities in preserving and prolonging a relationship, connections, as well as feelings and confidence in a person are diminished. Igor Matic, author of "The Social Construction of Mediated Experience and Self Identity in Social Networking", compares face-to-face (FTF) conversation versus computer-mediated communication, saying, "online environment, such as discussion forums, gaming portals, social networking sites, and the constant updates of our personal experience allows the Internet users today to choose whether they will represent themselves to the Internet public under their real name or not" (Matic 2). This, in turn, makes it easier for individuals to pretend and lie about who they are over social media. Karen Yust agrees with Matic in her article, "Exploring the Effects of Social Media on Children's Spirituality", stating that, "it's easier to pretend you're someone amazing than to face the reality that you have issues. It's easier to make friends online who don't know you than to go out in the real world and let someone see who you really are" (Yust 4). With the ease of being able to hide behind a computer screen, social media creates a way for individuals to display an image of who they want to be, not who they actually are. As a result, these relationships, built off of lies and exaggerations, suffer due to trust issues, as well as instability. Individuals end up constantly questioning what is real and what is false in their relationship, never being able to have certainty in the other. However, directly lying to someone over social media is not the only way that relationships are negatively affected, withheld information is another type of falsehood that can give off a different image online than of that in reality. When communicating with someone online, an individual may construct a different view or idea of a person based on given information or profile content, sometimes making it harder for the two to connect and relate in real life. Madison Ganda of Portland State University visits this point in her article, "Social Media and Self: Influences on the Formation of Identity and Understanding of Self Through Social Networking Sites" stating that, "impression derived from subsequent face-to-face meetings rarely correspond with those formed initially online" (Ganda 10). That being said, the qualities and characteristics that a person gives off online may differ from actuality, affecting the level of compatibility between the individuals. As a result, relationships become harder to shape because of the unknown differences in personalities as a repercussion of online communication. Social media creates a barrier between two individuals, which, as a result, leads to a lack of communication skills and social cues. Online communication also makes it easier for a person to pretend they are someone that they are not, giving them the ability to hide behind a screen. Because of the absence of these key social qualities, as well as a lack of face to face conversation, social media creates issues when constructing a truthful, familiar relationship.

Lastly, the recent uprise of parents and relatives using social networking sites to stay in the loop has also been proved to morph and alter relationships in several negative ways. Before the growing of the social media demographic, the majority of these online profiles belonged to the younger generation. Because of this change, adolescents are beginning to feel as if their parents are invading their privacy by partaking in social networking sites, which ultimately gives them the ability to view their child's every move online, whether is be their location, or who they are with. Now that parents have this option, trust issues, a huge problem when regarding qualities in a healthy relationship, have begun to arise because of the content posted by teenagers. Because of this, parents are becoming more concerned with being able to have faith in their child's words and actions, eventually damaging the relationship between the two. In Kristin van Ogtrop's article, "Facebook? Check. Twitter? Check. Instagram? Check. Snapchat? I give up", one mother explains how her attempting to protect her son online ended up affecting their relationship and resulting in a disagreement, as well as trust issues. In the article, she states that she was "conducting a virtual oversight of a friend of my son's classmates" when she saw a picture of her child doing something "spectacularly stupid" (Ogtrop 1). She texted her son to get the photo removed, which resulted in a "text fight about boundaries, and how I don't respect them, and how he has no privacy, and that I ruin everything" (Ogtrop 1). A prime example of the result of parent social media use, this article examines one of the negative effects that social networking has on parent and child relationships, specifically parental trust issues pertaining to their child's online post. Social networking also makes it ostensibly simpler for adults to restrict and control their child's online activity, negatively affecting their relationship in the long run. The new knowledge of social networking to parents allows them to choose certain sites their child can access, who their children contact online, and even certain times when their child is permitted to use these sites. This can end up being detrimental to the parent and child's connection in the sense that children, becoming more curious of these off limits material, may end up deceiving their parents and going behind their back, ultimately creating confidence and certainty issues. Wonsun Shin and Nurazli Ismail analyze the effects of parental restrictions on relationships between parents and their children in their article, "Exploring the Role of Parents and Peers in Young Adolescent's Risk Taking on Social Networking Sites". The two explain that parental restrictions are not all bad, however, their study revealed that, "adolescents who received higher levels of parental restrictive mediation were more inclined to engage in risk-taking behaviors because of social networking sites" (Shin and Ismail 5). By parents attempting to watch out for and protect their children online by restricting certain accesses, instead of benefiting the child, these restrictions may spark interest in off limit content (Shin and Ismail 5).This deception can result in trust issues, lack of freedom, and resent towards parents, which leads to issues maintaining a strong, healthy relationship. In addition to this, relationships are also damaged by parent social media use due to the fact that children tend to constantly feel as if their parents are overstepping boundaries and monitoring every move that they make, giving them no privacy and no room to be themselves and grow. When revisiting Kristin van Ogtrop's article, readers are informed that teenagers being able to have personal space, as well as privacy are "healthy behavior[s] when is comes to developing a sense of self and establishing an identity that is separate from that of the two people responsible for your DNA" (Ogtrop 1). When parents eliminate the chance for their child to grow on their own and "develop their sense of self", they may also be damaging important relationship building qualities such as trust, confidence, and solitude (Ogtrop 1). Without these traits, relationships cannot grow and flourish, but instead create damaging issues that cause parents to question their children, as well as children to rebel and go against their parents rules. Social media use between parent and child negatively affects relationships by complicating the process, making it harder for children to build and sustain working and healthy relationships (Ogtrop 1). As a result of trust issues that arise based on content posted online, children not being able to mature and flourish, and the lack of privacy because of parents, the use of social media generates negative outcomes that affect the building and preservation of personal relationships. 

Social media, without question, has various positive results such as the ease of accessing information, the ability to quickly communicate, and even the simplicity of being able to learn something new. However, social media use for some has become not only addictive, but a necessity. With the amount of time spent on social networking sites drawn into question, the negative effects of online use have too been debated. The damaging side effects of social media can range from something as simple as misinformation, to problems as serious as disrupting the identity formation process. Because of this, social networking has been shown, through various ways, to be detrimental to the process of forming lasting personal relationships, as well as creating and conserving new ones. Social media negatively affects relationships with family and friends as a result of cyberbullying, lack of face to face communication, and lastly, too much parental control leading to an invasion of privacy, which, in turn, lessens the quality and depth of personal connections. 

