Many scholars have argued whether or not Facebook, MySpace, and other social media affect adolescents’ and young adult’s behaviors and attitudes. Many people fear that today’s social media has mostly negative effects on adolescents and young adults. They also question social media’s relation to an individual’s strong and weak ties. Due to this accusation, many studies have been done to test this theory. There is a good amount of literature on general Internet use and social capital and on the net effects of SNS use on social capital. Some researchers, such as Nie (2001) found that Internet users had fewer face-to-face interactions, much like heavy television watchers. Subsequent research found that online communications have a positive effect on individuals’ social trust and participation in community life (Kobayashi, Ikeda, & Miyata, 2006; Rasänen & Kouvo, 2007). This battle can continue forever; however, there is a reoccurring theme; that the positive and negative effects of the Internet on social capital are dependent upon the way scholars conceptualize the medium and how people use it.
According to Donath and Boyd (2004) online social networks may not increase the number of strong ties a person may have. Instead, a person’s weak ties may increase because the technology is appropriate to maintaining these links cheaply and easily. This proposal was empirically tested by Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe (2007) using survey data from a small sample of undergraduate students in the U.S. They found that use of Facebook had a strong association with maintaining or solidifying existing offline relationships, as opposed to meeting new people. The strongest relationship, however, was between Facebook use and bridging social capital (Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe, 2007). Interestingly, these authors found that the use of the SNS interrelated with students’ psychological well-being, suggesting that Facebook might provide greater benefits for users who have low self-esteem and low life satisfaction.
Social media, such as e-mail, chat services, and SNSs, allow people to engage in interpersonal contact. When researchers operationalize Internet use as time spent with the technology, they ignore the multiple audiences, motives, and experiences that the medium allows. They then tend to find a negative effect on individual-level production of social capital (Nie & Hillygus, 2002). On the other hand, when researchers recognize the different uses of the Internet, such as informational, recreational, communicative, entertainment, etc, they tend to find a positive link between certain motives for Internet use and social capital (Beaudoin, 2008). In summary, it is not the technology per se that can affect individuals’ social capital but the specific ways in which individuals use the technology. This explains why online activities have been found to both reduce and increase social capital. Extending this rationale to other social media and SNSs, we could say that their impact on social capital should be dependent upon the specific uses and gratifications sought by users. Although I am sure with all this new social media available more testing will need to be done, I think the research so far shows that it’s the user itself that mainly controls how much social media will affect them.
