Social Networking Sites such as Facebook and Twitter as well as blogging

have destroyed communication between friends and family. Thus, how far
you agree with the statement?
In the era of science and technology, the Internet plays a pivotal and crucial part
in our lives. It makes a quantum leap and gives a profound impact of social interaction
among every Tom, Dick and Harry whereby the conventional communication tools such
as telegram and correspondence have became obsolete and have been superseded by
recent popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and blogging. No
doubt, the emergence and explosive growth of new communication technology within a
complex social system is bound to reconfigure everything in the world, especially the
relationships, friendships and liaison among each other. But how does it affect the
communication exactly? Some argue social network has weakened community ties;
however according to Hampton & Wellman (2003), social network is frequently used to
strengthen ties and facilitate the generation of social capital through relationships among
people. Therefore, I strongly disagree with the statement that social networking sites
have destroyed communication between friends and family.
In contradistinction to 19th to 20th century, social media like letters do not provide
the facilitation of face-to-face communication with family and friends. This inconvenience
may form a communication gap among each other when time and distances are issues
because expression in writing often constitutes less efficacious than in speech.
Sometimes, our actual impression and feeling cannot be conveyed hundred-percent by
letter or writing. Some people may have difficulty in formulating their ideas or clarifying
their mean by writing while sometimes, the messages may differ somewhat from our
original and exact mean when the words are translated from direct conversation into
writing. However, by means of video-calling application in Facebook nowadays, we not
only can send messages just on our fingertips and with a click of mouse, but also can
face-to-face communicate with our family and friends via webcam wherever and
whenever. This advance communication technology has facilitated the overseas
students to articulate and maintain relations with their hometown family and friends,
furthermore helped parents to alleviate their worries and longing for their children. What
is more, everyone can chat as much as they could because unlike correspondence and
phone call, video-calling via social network is free of charge. Meanwhile, the invention of

social networking sites have also enormously diminished the response time between
writer and sender compared with when letters were the norm.
Social networking sites also provide a web-based platform to publish ones own
life by creating profiles or personal homepages and updating their current status, diary
and photos on Facebook, Twitter and Blog. Our family and friends can simply see what
we have been up to, easily keep in close contact with us and chat as much as we could
on a daily basis than ever before, even from around the world. No doubt, we are
occasionally caught in the rat race until we have no time to update our status, leave
comment on others post and chat with family and friends, but with the facilitation of
photo-sharing, it offers us an easy but effective gateway to vocalize our feeling, idea and
current circumstance. Sometimes, we may be shy and reticent to express love, care and
affection for our family and friends; sometimes, we will be embarrassed to make
apologize or dissolve misunderstandings with others, but with a simple and meaningful
photo, it will strike a chord in somebody and help to express our innermost feeling, as a
proverb goes a picture paints a thousand words.
Most social networking sites encourage communication with others by providing
directories of relevant user populations, opportunities for self-description and content
uploads and recommender systems. (Chery L. Coyle & Heather Vaughn, 2008).
According to Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield & Cliff Lampe (2007), social
network sites allow individuals to present themselves, establish or maintain connections
with others. Thus, apart from offering the availability of searching our long lost friends,
renewing acquaintances with former classmates or old friends and maintain friendships
by trivial communication, social networks also constitute an effective platform for people
to interact and socialise by bridging communication gap among different people,
connecting and bringing like-minded people together in a quick and efficient manner
through interpersonal means, such as friendship, common interest or ideas, irrespective
of their religions, races, gender and nations. We can connect with friends and share our
emotions, resistances and incidents that we have encountered and experienced in our
whole lives to establish a sense of together. Meanwhile, according to Chery L. Coyle &
Heather Vaughn (2008), facebook is used to maintain students social capital. Social
capital broadly refers to the resources accumulated through the relationships among
people (Coleman, 1988). They share ideas and compare notes with friends while

collecting and acquiring knowledge, which in turn, may help to strengthen our friendship
and augment our social lives.
It is undeniable that social networking sites have grown by leaps and bounds
since 21st century around the world and regularly facilitated new connections and
linkages between family and friends whereby they provide people alternative ways to
connect with others who share their interests or relational goals. According to Chery L.
Coyle & Heather Vaughn (2008), social networking sites are simply another form of
interaction medium and communication tool that is evolving over time with the aid of
technology. No one will deny the benefits of being able to easily keep track on the latest
happenings, connect individuals or groups and interact within a network of people that
share a persons interest. (Megat Ishak, n.d.). To put it into a nut shell, social networking
sites definitely provide convenient, efficacious and instant platform to articulate and
maintain relations with family and friends, bridge communication gap among different
people and widen our social circles. Thus, I strongly emphasize that social networking
sites help to build up and encourage relationships and friendships among us, rather than
destroy communication between friends and family.