The topic of parasocial relationships and its effect on interpersonal relationships associates with literature in the means of communication. While discussing the idea that more social media use leads to less time capable of spending with your friends, research from our questionnaire helps us understand a more in depth meaning of what parasocial relationships can affect. Moreover, from our results we can conclude that people who engage in parasocial relationships are under the impression that these one-sided relationships have the likelihood of enduring strong in-person relationships. Some respondents of the survey who support this say that it “Helps friends relate to each other via social media” and “It keeps us all connected, especially if there’s distance between the two”. In contrast, others who believe opposite ideas suggested such that “You may have an altered or skewed expectation of the type of person they are before you actually meet them”. Discerning the idea that some respondents said trust becomes difficult through excessive use of social media (a factor of parasocial relationships), there is a valid contrary opinion to believe that social media can improve trust in non-parasocial relationships
We can observe from Figure 1.0 that there appears to be a slight positive relationship between perceiving friendships with media personas and satisfaction with one’s social life. We view that viewing a media persona as a friend is a pretty strong indicator of someone engaging in parasocial relationships, so the data suggests a correlation between parasocial interaction and the strength of one’s social life. This may imply that having parasocial relationships strengthens your social life, or it may imply that having a strong social life leads you to engage in parasocial interaction. The data we gathered is limited and we can’t definitively say which of these implications are more accurate. Further study would be required to turn these correlations into causation. Communication is one of the most valid forms of literacy and relationships are the foundation and often a result of communication.