Abstract:

Online social networks are used by individuals to create profiles, therefore they have a high quantity of personal information. As young people are the first who discover new platforms on the internet, it is necessary to study the use of social networks in universities, specifically targeting students.

However, many specialists in communication agree that nowadays people are tempted to have more virtual friends, to gain popularity and to acquire more information about said friends. Sometimes, the limits of communication are unhealthily overcome. It is not at all pleasant for a teacher in a classroom to see that his students are ignoring his/her lesson in favour of being permanently connected with dozens of virtual friends. If virtual connections become more mainstream than real life ones, the over-communication phenomena will affect the educational process.

In order to discover the presence of over-communication among students in “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, we have developed a survey based on self-administered questionnaires. The results highlight that the number of virtual friends of a student often exceeds the limit set by specialists as the maximum number of people with whom a person can socialize. Of course, this can have negative repercussions on students’ professional activities.

Keywords:

Students, over-communication, virtual, friends.