The relationship between social media usage and media dependency with the development of virtual relationship among generation Y / Russell Rohny

In today’s era, people are able to communicate towards one another through various forms of communication especially social media that have been provided for us to interact online. How we interact with one another has changed and enhance which it become digitalized where communication can now occur in the virtual world. It is remarkable where people can now interact one another in an instant. This gives various benefits towards the society yet people can also abuse the technology which people misuse or overuse it which affect them especially in their social lives. After years of development throughout the virtual world, many social media applications and social networks have been developed to make everything easier, reliable, faster and more comfortable. These tools and software have become so developed that it affects our trends, culture, orientation and especially social lifestyle. Now, people are so getting used to social media that they have been developing relationships through it. They are able to use social media as a platform to engage, develop and maintain relationships with new people. Yet, this has affected their social lifestyle which they have been using virtual communication too much rather than physical interaction. This has caused the development of virtual relationship among them. In this study, it discusses it details of the relationship between social media usage and internet addiction with the development of virtual relationship among Generation Y. This research focus on Generation Y as they have come a generation where they grow up and aware with the development and changes of technology from time to time. Basically, they grew up with the technology which makes them the best target audiences for this study. This chapter discusses about the advantages and disadvantages of virtual relationship with its significant relation between social media usage and media dependency along with the supported theory of Media Dependency Theory. It consists of the result from 60 respondents which is divided into two parts which are 30 males and 30 females. As Generation Y become this study’s target population, the development of virtual relationship is determined by referring to the two variables which are social media usage and media dependency. By analyzing its findings and data analysis, the conclusion were developed based on these three variables.