Preference of Generation Z Towards Social Interaction

The purpose of this study was to determine the preferred mode of interaction of generation Z. There are four novelties: (1) To understand the percentage of students who prefer social media as a medium of social interaction, (2) To know the percentage of students who prefer face-to-face interaction, (3) To comprehend what medium do they prefer to use when they are discussing their courtship involvement, academic matters, personal issues, interpersonal relational conflicts, sex-related matters, and (4) To know the reasons for students' preference in terms of mode of Interaction. The study used a mixed-method approach, employed explanatory design, and used simple random sampling in choosing the 76 respondents/participants from the Sultan Kudarat State University (SKSU) students. A survey and an interview were conducted to compare face-to-face interaction and social media interaction as the primary mode of interaction. The results showed that 60 students prefer face-to-face interaction over 76 students, with a frequency of 78.94% out of 100%. It is concluded that most of the students prefer face-to-face social interaction rather than social media. This study has an impact on Generation Z, as it serves as a realization of their social activeness in interaction as well as on the community. Also, it will help society understand how Generation Z compares to other generations by being the generation most affected by technology and its rapidly evolving form of communication, as well as the loss of their ability to communicate. © 2021 Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia Article History: Received 28 Jan 2021 Revised 08 Feb 2021 Accepted 11 Feb 2021 Available online 11 Feb 2021 ____________________ Keyword: Generation Z, Face-to-face Interaction, Social Media Interaction, Preference, Technology, Communication Indonesian Journal of Community and Special Needs Education Journal homepage: http://ejournal.upi.edu/index.php/IJCSNE/ Indonesian Journal of Community and Special Needs Education 1 (1) (2021) 41-46 Generose C. Billano.,. Preference of Generation Z Towards ... | 42 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10. 17509/xxxxt.vxix pISSN 2775-8400 eISSN 2775-9857


A B S T R A C T S A R T I C L E I N F O
The purpose of this study was to determine the preferred mode of interaction of generation Z. There are four novelties: (1) To understand the percentage of students who prefer social media as a medium of social interaction, (2) To know the percentage of students who prefer face-to-face interaction, (3) To comprehend what medium do they prefer to use when they are discussing their courtship involvement, academic matters, personal issues, interpersonal relational conflicts, sex-related matters, and (4) To know the reasons for students' preference in terms of mode of Interaction. The study used a mixed-method approach, employed explanatory design, and used simple random sampling in choosing the 76 respondents/participants from the Sultan Kudarat State University (SKSU) students. A survey and an interview were conducted to compare face-to-face interaction and social media interaction as the primary mode of interaction. The results showed that 60 students prefer face-to-face interaction over 76 students, with a frequency of 78.94% out of 100%. It is concluded that most of the students prefer face-to-face social interaction rather than social media. This study has an impact on Generation Z, as it serves as a realization of their social activeness in interaction as well as on the community. Also, it will help society understand how Generation Z compares to other generations by being the generation most affected by technology and its rapidly evolving form of communication, as well as the loss of their ability to communicate.

INTRODUCTION
There are two categories under types of communication mediums, the physical media, and mechanical media (Oliver, 2019). This has served as the options of our mode of interaction. Children and adolescents seem to communicate with their peers more electronically than face-to-face (Nour, et al., 2019). (Qotrunnada & Nurani, 2021) This has led to suspicions if the convenience of Social Media could make people less likely to undergo Face-to-face Interaction.
With Social Media, the death of real-world interaction might be a possibility (Toivonen, et al., 2019) and with the overuse of gadgets for interacting, this might cause impoverishment of language since people are using shortened versions of words in messages to deliver it quickly (Haji & Bakir, 2019;Izazi & Tengku-Sepora, 2020;Winarni & Rasiban, 2021). Which makes it an urgency for social communication (Saputra, et al., 2020). However, there is no study about the preference of social interaction based on gender, age, personality types, and so on.
We have conducted this study on the most recent Generation, Generation Z. Generation Z's consumption habit differs from the former generations, even from the Millennial (Dimock, 2019). This study was mainly conducted if Generation Z prefers either the interaction with the convenience of social media or meaningful verbal communication among peers in face-to-face, and find the percentage of each. This study aims to determine what the preference of Generation Z is towards Social Interaction amidst the influence of technological advancements. It also aims to determine the likely cause of their chosen mode of interaction.
Afterward, we interrogated them regarding the reasons for their chosen medium, and also, for Courtship Involvement, Academic Matters, Personal Issues, Interpersonal Relational Conflicts (i.e., Family. Friends), and Sex-related Matters.

METHODS
We employed Mixed Method, particularly Explanatory Research Design (Rahi, 2017), which is utilized for two research approaches─ the quantitative and qualitative. The sampling used is the Simple Random Sampling Technique (Sharma, 2017) to select 73 students from the total population in the Laboratory High School of 326 students. Figure 1 shows the data gathering procedure. Out of 76 students, respondents that chose social media as their general medium of interaction is 21.06%, which is 16 respondents. Whilst for the respondents who have chosen face-to-face, they got a percentage of 78.94%, of which are 60 respondents. On the given topics, the frequency of the respondents choosing faceto-face interaction in each topic is also significantly higher than Social media Interaction as shown in Table 1. This is in line with references ; Haristiani & Rifa'i, 2020). We have chosen 5 participants out of the 76 participants and interrogated them regarding the reason for their preferred mode of interaction and will be as followed: In general, three out of five participants preferred social media interaction over faceto-face Interaction. Reasons include personality traits, shyness, and convenience. Personality related to frequency of social media and social media news (Gil de Zúñiga, et al., 2017).
In courtship involvement, the participants preferred face-to-face interaction. All of their reasons include truthfulness, genuinely, and sincerity. Although there were courtship practices, romantic relationship initiation, and mate selection in the social media online dating platforms (Dobson-Lohman, 2020;Opesade, et al., 2020), participant were choosing face-to-face interaction over social media interaction.
In academic matters, most of the participants preferred face-to-face interaction.
Reasons include being straightforward, will be much comprehensible, and can easily illustrate, evaluate, demonstrate, elaborate, or discuss a topic. Learning and teaching activities using social media interaction can be seen as a strategic shift to enhance pedagogical outcomes and engagement (Chugh & Ruhi, 2018).
In personal issues, three participants chose face-to-face for reasons of presence of emotion, and to converse about the problems properly. Another participant says both and it depends on the relationship.
In interpersonal relational conflict, four participants chose face-to-face. Reasons include discussing the problem correctly, conform solutions, avoid misunderstandings, establish a much stronger relationship. One participant says both as it depends on the comfortableness. Social media were used as a route to conform such discussions (Chen & Li, 2017;Kim, 2017). In sex-related matters, three chose social media as the mode of interaction. This is in line with reference (Mulyahati & Rasiban, 2021). Reasons are it will not be taken seriously, uneasiness, and can usually guarantee your privacy. Anonymous level can be used as a route to talk about such subject, guaranteeing the subject's privacy (De Wolf, 2020; Barth & De Jong, 2017). Two (2) preferred face-to-face interaction. Reasons include accurate conveyance, and a participant claims that it is weird to talk about it online.

CONCLUSION
The majority of the students prefer faceto-face interaction when it comes to discussing courtship involvement, academic matters, personal issues, interpersonal relational conflicts, sex-related matters. In the end, based on this study, it is concluded that most of the students prefer Face-to-face in social interaction rather than social media. Nevertheless, their the reasons for their chosen preference area mostly personal and not of convenience.

AUTHORS' NOTE
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this article. Authors confirmed that the paper was free of plagiarism.