Wed, 2013-04-17 14:17 | 
For researchers interested in the dynamics of human communication, it is fascinating that people use the internet as a medium for social interaction. The present study focuses on Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, which are considered the latest online communication tool the Internet has to offer. Its goal is to investigate SNS usage in Greece, in terms of online social interactions and interpersonal relationships.
Given the study objectives, as well as the literature review, factors that affect the use of SNS for social purposes are investigated. These factors consist of motives for SNS usage, personality characteristics, online relationship quality, attraction to online social support, depressive symptomatology, problematic use of social networking
sites and socio-demographic factors.
A sample of 500 young adults in Greece, varying from 18 to 34 years of age, participated on a voluntary basis and completed a series of measures that were translated, adapted into Greek and revised through back-translations. The questionnaires consist of multiple choice questions, 5point and 7point Likert-type scales, as well as “Right/ Wrong” answers that take approximately 40 minutes to fill. Since the validity of the measures used in the present research has not been studied in a Greek population, it was deemed necessary to study their factorial structure based on the sample.
Preliminary findings of the study, which emerged through statistical analysis, suggest that there are statistically significant relationships between depression, personality characteristics and problematic SNS usage. Place of residence is associated with problematic use, with participants from rural areas exhibiting higher scores than participants from urban areas. Even though age and gender are not found to be related to either depressive symptomatology or problematic SNS usage, men more than women are attracted to online social support. Motives are associated positively and significantly with the average daily use of SNS and women more than men are frequent Facebook users.The existence of a close relationship online, motives and personality characteristics are the best predictors of online relationship quality. The aforementioned results will be enriched by the end of the data processing, a work still in progress.
