The effect of the internet on the social skills of adolescents

This study explores the effect the Internet has on the social skills of adolescents. It was hypothesized the more time an adolescent spends online the less likely they would be to identify visual facial emotions. By surveying thirty high school students ages 16-18 years old, the research found time spent on the Internet had a weak relationship to visual facial emotions. Through supplementary analyses, there was a strong relationship between compulsive Internet usage and decreased accuracy in identification of visual facial emotions. It was also concluded there was a strong correlation between people met through the Internet and decreased identification in visual facial emotions. The adolescents who met "online friends" through various media such as through the Internet then subsequently talking on the phone or meeting in person had lower levels of identification of visual facial emotions. This further supports Nie and Hillygus (2002) displacement hypothesis suggesting adolescents may have lower quality of online friendship than in real life. In conclusion, social skills may be evolving and changing due to the technology around us as we are less able to identify visual facial emotions when there are compulsions to use the Internet.