S. H. LIU ET AL.
come the operating standard for acting more maturely. Mc-
Kenna, Green and Gleason (2002) express that less interactive
presence can reduce possible uncomfortable feelings during
face-to-face interaction. People will open their mind when con-
necting with others on the Internet (Suler, 2004). Comparing to
real life, people are more willing to make a self-disclosure on
the Internet than in the real-life situation (McKenna et al.,
2002). Thus, Facebook use can facilitate adolescents to volun-
tarily express their thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and attitude
towards life and to seek for identification from others, and fur-
ther to tie with their friends through Internet communication.
Reasonably, Facebook use has positive effects on adolescents’
interpersonal relationships. Due to different types of interac-
tions in real-life and virtual situation, real-life and virtual inter-
personal relationships may be developed separately.
Furthermore, the adolescents’ interactions with friends, par-
ents, and teachers may differ, resulting in different interper-
sonal relationships with different objects. According to a Tai-
wanese study by Chou and Peng (2007), the majority of Tai-
wanese adolescents did not tell their parents about their online
dating; these adolescents, however, trusted the built online
friendships. boyd and Hargittai (2010) reported that the major-
ity of young adult users of Facebook are engaged with manag-
ing their privacy settings. Some students would be aghast if
they knew the kinds of information that their instructors could
collect about them on Facebook. Moreover, more time the ado-
lescents spend on Internet interaction, higher trustfulness they
hold for net-friends, which means more dangerous they would
emerge in situation (McCarty, Prawitz, Derscheid, & Mont-
gomery, 2011). The above literature refers to adolescents’
various interactions with different objects. The frequency of
using Facebook for interactions seems to also impact adoles-
cents’ interpersonal relationships with friends, parents, and
teachers.
In sum, whether Taiwanese adolescents use overly Facebook
may relate to their real-life/virtual relationships with different
interactive objects. Based on the above discussions, the first
research question is addressed as “What are the differences in
adolescents’ real-life/virtual interpersonal relationships with
friends, parents, and teachers between a variety of frequencies
of using Facebook for interactions?”
Moreover, some people do not agree with the benefits of
Facebook on interpersonal relationships and believe that health
interpersonal relationships should be built and maintained on
people’s real life. Internet social contacts may reduce face-to-
face interaction with others and further neglect to foster social
interpersonal skills. Louv (2005) argued that overly online in-
teraction increases lack of experiences in social interaction with
others. Whitty (2008) also indicated that online interaction
tends to use paralinguistic and emotional symbols, resulting in
lack of interactive presence, and even, additional aggressive
language. Martusewicz (2010) worried that this so-called social
networking, resulting from Facebook use, as a students’ capac-
ity may not be able to deal, intelligently, face-to-face with par-
ents, and even other teachers.
Kraut, Patterson, Lundmark, Kiesler, Mukopadhyay and
Scherlis (1998) initially argued that online interaction weaken
social relationships with others. However, they investigated the
same samples after three years and indicated that the previous
negative effects have disappeared. The latter study concluded
that online interaction has positive effects on social participa-
tion. Accompanying with the positive effects, adolescents’
interpersonal relationships increasingly expand. Desjarlais and
Willoughby (2010) conducted a longitudinal study about ado-
lescents’ friendships in using Internet to make friends and indi-
cated that online interaction with their known friends benefits
their real-life interpersonal relationships. As for contacts with
strangers, a study by Gross (2004) indicated that the built rela-
tionships with strangers were weak and helpless for interper-
sonal relationships. McKenna, Green and Gleason (2002) ex-
plored whether the real-life interpersonal relationships were
weaken while people favor online interaction with others and
reported that 95% of the participants who usually make contact
with others through Internet did not reduce social interaction
with family and friends in daily lives. The study also revealed
that 88% of the participants who overly use Internet communi-
cation did not change the way to interact with their family and
friends. The above perspectives seem to reveal that adolescents’
real-life and virtual relationships with others tend to be consis-
tent when using Facebook for interactions.
These previous studies did not sufficiently identify that In-
ternet communication by Facebook use benefits adolescents’
interpersonal relationships, especially with parents and teachers.
Online interaction may weaken social relationships with others
in the life, In terms of an adolescent ranging in age from 13 to
15 years, parents and teachers are still important people in their
life. An adolescent with health social relationships with parents
as well as teachers are still necessary. However, few studies
involved the comparison between real-life relationships and
virtual relationships in parents and teachers whom adolescents
use Facebook to interact with. The second research question
is addressed as “What are the differences in Taiwanese adoles-
cents’ interpersonal relationships with friends, parents, and
teachers between real-life and virtual relationships when using
Facebook for interaction?”
Methods
A survey method was conducted to determine the differences
of adolescents’ real-life/virtual interpersonal relationships with
friends, parents, and teachers when using Facebook for interac-
tion. Before the survey, four professors as well as four junior
high school teachers were invited to examine the initiate ques-
tionnaire and a group of 100 junior high school students were
recruited to fill in the revised questionnaire. In final, 740 junior
high school students who have experiences of using Facebook
and whose Facebook friends include their parents and teachers,
were invited to fill in the validated questionnaire. Through ex-
amined carefully, 674 questionnaires were available.
Two assessments were applied in this questionnaire. The
Real-life Interpersonal Relationship (RIR) assessed adoles-
cents’ real-life interpersonal relationships with friends, parents,
and teachers. The Virtual Interpersonal Relationship (VIR)
assessed adolescents’ virtual interpersonal relationships with
friends, parents, and teachers. The items of interpersonal rela-
tionships included self-discourse, sharing information, receiv-
ing help, and emotional support for others. The RIR and VIR
have 12 items respectively. Examples of the items in the RIR
were “I am willing to make a self-discourse with my friends in
life”, “I am willing to share information with my parents”, and
“I am willing to express my feeling with my teachers”. Exam-
ples for VIR items were “I am willing to make a self-discourse
with my online friends on Facebook”, “I am willing to share
information with my parents through Facebook”, and “I am
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