b'Exploring Youth Social Interaction in Singapores Urban Spaces and Online Platformscontrast between an online and FTF persona,youths generally avoid deepening theirrelationships with their online acquaintancessince youths perceived expectations aboutthe other party has been ruined and theyfeel somewhat cheated.SolutionsBased on the previous section, thissection explains the findings backed byresearch done in the domain ofenvironmental and social recommendationson how to promote more social interactions among youths of different backgrounds in Singapore are made.How do youths interact with their environment?Typical behaviours of peopleobserved in a location (Figure 7; circled inred) might sometimes be more influentialthan amenities and features in determiningthe social behaviours engaged by youths.Generally, youths social behaviours in publicspaces are constrained by (1) amenities andfeatures observed and (2) typical behavioursof others around them (see Figure 7). Forinstance, youths tend to chat with theirfriends when seated on a bench or jog on ajogging track. Combined with what theyobserve others are doing, their socialbehaviours are determined by what isavailable in the environment and people.However, there were some instanceswhereby social activities atypical of a publicspace (e.g., cycling outside a shopping mallin Marina Bay Sands) occurred. Typicalbehaviours of people observed in the spacemight sometimes be more influential than amenities and features on the social behaviours engaged byyouths. This means that if a large majority of people are engaged in social activities that theenvironment amenities and features do not support, the activities will still occur since the crowd winsin such instances.How does the overall nature of a public space affect socialisation?The characteristics of the space and the behaviour of its users inform youths perception of thespace. These two factors contribute to youths environmental knowledge and thus influences theirdecision to socialise in a place. The factors prescribe what youths know and believe about the nature ofa place and are obtained from observation and socialising at the place itself (see Figure 8). For instance,researchers found that youths have the knowledge that Toa Payoh Central (TPC) has a lot of old shopsand designs, making them believe it to be archaic and boring. Furthermore, the place is usually filledwith an older demographic and youths are rarely seen outside of meal hours. As a result, youths do notvisit TPC for recreation, instead they use it as a place to meet with friends and take the MRT to other7TH PSYCHOLOGY STUDIES 50STUDENT CONFERENCE 2021'