Face-to-face communication is of key importance for successful socialization of a person into a society. Social media makes a good complement to such form of communication. Parents and pedagogical workers must be aware of children not replacing face-to-face communication for communication through the social media in the process of education and growing up. Young people nevertheless frequently communicate through the social media. For this reason, we tried to extract positive features of those social media which could contribute to socialise actively and to face-to-face communication.
An empirical research was conducted with schoolchildren of the third triad of elementary schools. Our main interest was to find out about the Slovenian students’ attitude towards face-to-face communication and the communication through the social media. We have noticed that people tend to be occupied with the social media and their public image too much. Socializing in person is no longer the only form of socializing, as the social media supersede face-to-face communication.
People’s personalities also influence how the social media are used. The personality was defined according to the Big Five Model as stated in professional literature. According to the definition, different Internet users behave differently online.
Regardless of personality, the social media must be used responsibly, because they pose different challenges despite their advantages. When spending time online, a high level of regularity must be applied. At the same time, being a role model for other users is necessary. Parents and teachers should constantly teach children and raise awareness about the safe use of the social media and the Internet.
We searched for a tool with a function to encourage face-to-face communication, as the existing tools do not suit such purpose. Their focus is different or they include factors which connect the user to the Web instead of disconnecting them from it.
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