Me and my 400 friends: the anatomy of college students' Facebook networks, their communication patterns, and well-being.

By A. Manago, T. Taylor, Patricia M. Greenfield. Developmental Psychology, 2012

619 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Is there a trade-off between having large networks of social connections on social networking sites such as Facebook and the development of intimacy and social support among today's generation of emerging adults? To understand the socialization context of Facebook during the transition to adulthood, an online survey was distributed to college students at a large urban university; participants answered questions about their relationships by systematically sampling their Facebook contacts while viewing their Facebook profiles online. Results confirmed that Facebook facilitates expansive social networks that grow disproportionately through distant kinds of relationship (acquaintances and activity connections), while also expanding the number of close relationships and stranger relationships, albeit at slower rates. Those with larger networks estimated that larger numbers of contacts in their networks were observing their status updates, a form of public communication to one's entire contact list. The major function of status updates was emotional disclosure, the key feature of intimacy. This finding indicates the transformation of the nature of intimacy in the environment of a social network site. In addition, larger networks and larger estimated audiences predicted higher levels of life satisfaction and perceived social support on Facebook. These findings emphasize the psychological importance of audience in the Facebook environment. Findings also suggest that social networking sites help youth to satisfy enduring human psychosocial needs for permanent relations in a geographically mobile world--college students with higher proportions of maintained contacts from the past (primarily high school friends) perceived Facebook as a more useful tool for procuring social support.

Subfields: Communication, Education, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5b16d3df9b3551bff848892215ba95040ec33615

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Citations in the corpus

Influence of Social Support Received in Online and Offline Contexts on Satisfaction With Social Support and Satisfaction With Life: A Longitudinal Study (2015, background): “Manago et al. (2012), for example, pointed out the fact that the positive relation between the number of Facebook friends and satisfaction with life could be a result of successful self-presentation: ‘‘our study points to another potential benefit of large networks for the current generation of…”
Customers' need for uniqueness theory versus brand congruence theory: The impact on satisfaction with social network sites (2020, neutral): “and a sense of community has been predicted to increase satisfaction with SNSs (Manago et al., 2012; Oh et al., 2014).”
Using Social Media for Social Comparison and Feedback-Seeking: Gender and Popularity Moderate Associations with Depressive Symptoms (2015, neutral): “…maintains a network of about 300 online friends (Madden et al. 2013a), meaning that behaviors on social networking sites are performed in the presence of an audience; every photo, comment, and new online friend provides details about the user to his or her public network (Manago et al. 2012).”
Facebook Friends with (Health) Benefits? Exploring Social Network Site Use and Perceptions of Social Support, Stress, and Well-Being (2013, neutral): “10,11 However, the role of social support is still unclear.”
Need for relatedness: a self-determination approach to examining attachment styles, Facebook use, and psychological well-being (2016, background): “Therefore, this study proposes that, in addition to the frequency in tie strength approach, the types of online connections (Manago et al., 2012) should also be examined to gain a more nuanced perspective on well-being.”
Online communication, social media and adolescent wellbeing: A systematic narrative review (2014, neutral): “To date, academic attention in this area appears skewed towards young adult populations, namely older college students (Ellison et al, 2007; Manago et al, 2012).”
Toward an Integrated and Differential Approach to the Relationships Between Loneliness, Different Types of Facebook Use, and Adolescents’ Depressed Mood (2020, background): “Although only a few studies considered the impact of specific types of Facebook use on young people’s perceptions of social support (Frison & Eggermont, 2015a; Manago et al., 2012), the impact of specific”
Products as Pals: Engaging with Anthropomorphic Products Mitigates the Effects of Social Exclusion (2017, positive): “…mechanism, as prior research indicates that larger Facebook networks and larger estimated audiences (i.e., the number of people viewing one’s posts and status updates) are associated with higher levels of life satisfaction and perceived social support (Manago, Taylor, and Greenfield 2012).”