Essentially, Facebook's attraction and the sense of belonging that it brings reduce the effort that people put into interpersonal relationships given their perception of connection informed by the abundance of information shared on Facebook. The users already feel connected to people, so they make less effort to engage in interpersonal communication, which can often be unpredictable and messy as much as it might be rewarding and fruitful. The less people use conventional interpersonal communication methods, the lower the quality of their (limited) interactions and the value derived from them are. In turn, people feel less of a desire to connect interpersonally if they gain little from these interactions, which then prompts more use of Facebook as a means of fulfilling the essential human desire to belong and connect with one another. The attempt to unpack the causal relationship between the use of Facebook and the quality of interpersonal communication in this paper has illuminated the dynamic process whereby the more an individual uses Facebook relative to interpersonal communication methods and feels more connected to people across an array of
groups and networks, the less he/she connects directly with people on an interpersonal basis, forfeiting valuable reciprocal intimacy from (potentially) strong interpersonal relationships. Thus, the person turns once again to Facebook as a means of gaining access to groups of people with whom he/she has loose associations and where he/she can attain a sense of belonging and connection.